Particles of Thought

HEATHER (00:00:00):

When you solve a puzzle, that's a good feeling.

HAKEEM (00:00:03):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:00:03):

And there's evolutionary reasons for why our brains evolve to find pleasure in solving problems. And I think finding meaning in ambiguous things and finding purpose, it gives us a sense of this pleasure, this contentment.

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HAKEEM (00:00:28):

Heather?

HEATHER (00:00:29):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:00:30):

Welcome. Thank you so much for coming to Particles of Thought.

HEATHER (00:00:32):

Thank you for having me.

HAKEEM (00:00:34):

Yes. I am so excited to talk to you because you are a neuroscientist and psychologist, is that correct?

HEATHER (00:00:40):

That is.

HAKEEM (00:00:41):

My brain got issues. But before we get into all my issues, let's start at the very beginning because when we're talking about the brain and what you do, we are talking about consciousness, but I'm not sure I know what that is. How do you define consciousness?

HEATHER (00:01:01):

Oh, just easy question right off the bat. I have a very simple answer, but it took us a long time to get to this.

HAKEEM (00:01:10):

Okay.

HEATHER (00:01:10):

So, one time they brought together all the sort of these world experts, neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists. We went to this retreat, I think it was in Aspen for a week. And all we had to do was discuss. We had whiteboards for the whole... It's just come up with a definition of consciousness.

HAKEEM (00:01:28):

Oh, interesting.

HEATHER (00:01:28):

Yeah. So, I'd be like writing it down and this, agreed. Do you agree at this? And finally, after the end of this whole week, what we all agreed on is very simple. It is first-person subjective experience.

HAKEEM (00:01:42):

So, does that mean you have awareness? That's what first-person means.

HEATHER (00:01:46):

First-person is only you have access to it.

HAKEEM (00:01:48):

Okay.

HEATHER (00:01:49):

Okay. So, I don't know that you're conscious. I'm only have access to my own awareness, my own. And first of all, you don't need language for it. You don't need intelligence. You don't need a sense of self. It is pure subjective sensation, perception. So, just simply experiencing pain.

HAKEEM (00:02:08):

Okay. So, does one need a brain? So, can an instrument that has a neural net, a creature that has a neural net versus one with a brain, do they both have consciousness?

HEATHER (00:02:20):

So, it depends on what our fundamental theory of what's the basis of consciousness? The material basis of consciousness. And that's something that's fascinated me from basically my entire career is right now I know I have it.

HAKEEM (00:02:35):

Material basis.

HEATHER (00:02:36):

Material basis of consciousness. So, it's this subjective experience that we have, and we assume other animals have it because we have a similar evolutionary history. They act as if they're conscious. If you step on a cat's foot, it yelps as if it's feeling pain.

HAKEEM (00:02:48):

Right.

HEATHER (00:02:49):

If you look at the hardware, it looks pretty similar. Like a little square cubic millimeter of cortex of a monkey will look very similar to ours. So, we assume other animals have it. And you go how far down the line, then it starts to get questionable about bees, fish, ants. So, we know that it's something that has to do with the nervous system, but could it be instantiated in other matter?

HAKEEM (00:03:13):

Right. Or even non-living matter.

HEATHER (00:03:16):

Or non-living matters. Silicon, whatever. We will only know for sure if we have an agreed upon fundamental theory of consciousness.

HAKEEM (00:03:23):

Definition or theory consciousness.

HEATHER (00:03:24):

Theory of consciousness, and there's several out there that are leading contenders. We're actually pitting them against each other experimentally in this big study that's going on across the world. If say the integrated information theory of consciousness wins out, IIT, which says any system that basically has a high degree of differentiated integrated information will have this property of consciousness, then it's substrate independent. Meaning you could have any system, the brain just happens to be one of these systems, but theoretically, it could be a non-organic matter.

HAKEEM (00:03:59):

So, what stood out to me is we use the word integrated because sensor is not just having sensory data that forms consciousness because there are simple single-celled life forms that know, "Oh, bad stuff here, I need to move that way."

HEATHER (00:04:15):

Right. Approach, avoid. An amoeba can approach, avoid. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:04:18):

Yeah, but they're not conscious.

HEATHER (00:04:20):

Right. Or it depends on how you define what we mean by consciousness.

HAKEEM (00:04:24):

But there's no evidence of integrated knowledge on their part.

HEATHER (00:04:28):

Right. Right.

HAKEEM (00:04:29):

Yeah. So, memory doesn't equal consciousness then?

HEATHER (00:04:33):

No, because we could have what's called implicit memory, which is memories that we are not consciously aware like motor memory.

HAKEEM (00:04:42):

Right.

HEATHER (00:04:43):

Riding a bicycle-

HAKEEM (00:04:43):

Yeah, you're not conscious it.

HEATHER (00:04:44):

... you're not thinking about it. I mean, if you put your attention on it, then you can make yourself conscious of it or tying your shoe. When you're first learning it, it's explicit. You're very conscious, you're thinking about it. Once it becomes habitual, you no longer need to think about, it becomes unconscious memory. So, memory doesn't... And then it moves to different parts of the brain, depending on if it's explicit or implicit.

HAKEEM (00:05:07):

Right. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:05:08):

But so memory in itself doesn't have to be conscious. It's just pure subjective experience. Philosophers call qualia. But the redness of red, experiencing just seeing the color red, not it's me experiencing this red or this red reminds me of the red on the Chinese flag or whatever. It's just pure sensation. So, other animals have this. We just have then higher levels of complexity on what we do with that pure sensory information and that perception.

HAKEEM (00:05:34):

Right, right. Right. Okay.

HEATHER (00:05:36):

So simple [inaudible 00:05:38].

HAKEEM (00:05:37):

I don't know if we understand what consciousness is anymore, but it-

HEATHER (00:05:43):

I would say it's like that thing that for you, for us, what you experience when you first wake up in the morning and experience anything, your first sensations, it's everything we experience until we go into a deep dreamless sleep. But most of what's happening in your brain is happening outside of awareness. We're only conscious of very little bit because it takes a lot of processing to bring things into consciousness. Most things are happening outside of awareness, but it's subjective. And when we test people, I have to ask you, "Did you see this or not? Were you aware of this or not?" And that's where it becomes difficult with animals. We have to come up with tricks on how to test it experimentally or a person in a coma if they're conscious or not.

HAKEEM (00:06:21):

Well, that's what I was going to get at-

HEATHER (00:06:21):

You should ask them.

HAKEEM (00:06:22):

... is there a way to... There are different states of unconsciousness. You could be asleep, you could be anesthetized, you could be in a coma. So, in comparison to the awake brain, or what even about even altered brain states, if you're on some sort of hallucinogenic, right? Do you see the-

HEATHER (00:06:39):

Gradations? Okay. So, if you think of it like this scale, there's awakeness and awareness. So, the brain needs to be fully awake to be aware of anything. So, there is different levels of-

HAKEEM (00:06:57):

Wait a minute, wait a minute. As an example, when I was very, very young, I was a bedwetter.

HEATHER (00:07:04):

Okay.

HAKEEM (00:07:06):

Then I realized, "Oh, if I'm having a dream that I'm about to go, I need to wake up." And I developed the ability to do that. So, it's like I had consciousness while I was unconscious.

HEATHER (00:07:15):

But here's the thing, when you're dreaming, we tend to be in this sort of REM sleep stage, which when you look at the brain activation looks like an awake brain. So, when you're conscious in your dreams, you're asleep, but you're aware. So, dreams are kind of an anomaly. So, if you look at this scale of how awake the brain is, so you have fully awake, then you have different stages, sleep, coma, this and that, then you have how aware you are.

HAKEEM (00:07:42):

Right.

HEATHER (00:07:42):

But dreams are really interesting because they're outside of this line here, because it's you're asleep, but you're aware. And that's because the brain's in this interesting state where your prefrontal cortex is decreasing activation, but when you look at the activation of the brain, it looks as almost like the awake brain in terms of EEG. So, it's a unique state, but you are conscious when you're dreaming. That's consciousness-

HAKEEM (00:08:06):

That is interesting.

HEATHER (00:08:07):

... even though you're asleep. So, yeah, it's not a one-to-one correlation, but we assume that you have to kind of be fully awake outside of certain [inaudible 00:08:16], like dreaming to be aware of anything. And then we usually, when we're testing consciousness, we say in a fully awake person, not in a coma, not under anesthesia, "Do you see it or not? Are you conscious of it or not?" But then you have different levels of consciousness in terms of awakeness, let's call it.

HAKEEM (00:08:33):

So, consciousness is related to what you're putting your attention on.

HEATHER (00:08:38):

Not necessarily. So, there's studies that show... There can be a dissociation between attention and consciousness. So, usually they coincide with one another, but there are ways in which we can tease them apart where you can have attention separate from consciousness, which gets us into the weeds.

HAKEEM (00:08:58):

Oh, my God.

HEATHER (00:08:58):

So, sometimes, although we equate consciousness with awareness, we'll say awareness, but attention and consciousness are two different things.

HAKEEM (00:09:06):

Well, I guess what I was getting at is a lot could be going on around you, but if you don't pay attention, you're going to be unaware, right?

HEATHER (00:09:13):

Usually, yeah. So, when you have that-

HAKEEM (00:09:14):

So, your brain is filtering or something.

HEATHER (00:09:17):

Right. That sort of you're at a cocktail party and I'm talking to you, but suddenly my brain hears my name over there in this conversation. Suddenly I'm looking at you, whatever, but my attention, my auditory attention is here, and I'm tuning into what they're saying over there. And you can refocus your attention, depending. So, certain things grab your brain's attention. Change does, novelty does, your brain, some word that might be significant to you, and you shift your awareness and your attention.

HAKEEM (00:09:46):

So, in preparing for chatting with you today, I looked up some of your previous interviews, and I saw this notion of a perception box, and it really shook me. And let me tell you why. Because as a scientist myself studying reality, I run up on these points where I did make a discovery, like, "Oh, time ain't time." And I end up at places where I'm like, "Oh, do I even exist?" And now it's almost like you're telling me that my perception of the world, some ways it seems it's obvious, but break apart the idea of a perception box and how that determines and defines one's experience of reality. And ultimately, does that mean reality is reality if it's a perception box dependent thing?

HEATHER (00:10:37):

So, we perceive reality or the world... Maybe there are fundamental objective truths out there. I think the best way to get to them is through the scientific method, because we're all inherently biased because we are perceiving reality. It's being actually constructed for us by this filter of the brain. Each one of our brains is different. So, it's like a thumb print. Each brain has its own unique neural setup architecture and-

HAKEEM (00:11:04):

And history.

HEATHER (00:11:05):

Yeah, exactly. What you've been exposed to, the way your brain has developed over your lifetime, your genetic predispositions. So, there's a lot of similarities, but there's also definitely... We're each unique in terms of our brain. So, given that our organ that helps us perceive the world is different, we all are seeing the world in slightly different ways depending on our history and our genetics and so, the brain is constructing it's... It's dark in there, right? It's dark.

HAKEEM (00:11:36):

That is such a brilliant... But I once heard someone say that your teeth are the only part of the skeleton that you see on the outside. Your eyeballs are the only part of the brain that you see on the outside.

HEATHER (00:11:49):

Right. Right. But they're really just nerve endings. That's all it is. And it's a series of ones and zeros. It's just information coming into this machine that doesn't actually see anything.

HAKEEM (00:12:03):

So, the signals it takes as input are from the ears, from the eyes, from the taste buds.

HEATHER (00:12:08):

Are five senses, yeah.

HAKEEM (00:12:10):

And they're like chemical and voltages?

HEATHER (00:12:10):

Chemical and... Yeah, exactly. Electrical and chemical signals. Then our brain constructs this into a subjective perception, but our perception does not correlate one-to-one with objective reality. So-

HAKEEM (00:12:29):

Let's define the word perception here.

HEATHER (00:12:31):

Okay. Oh, that's difficult. It's harder to define than consciousness.

HAKEEM (00:12:35):

Just receive sensory data?

HEATHER (00:12:37):

You're receiving sensory data, and then you're forming a sort of percept, an image or a sound. The way we construct how we're either seeing or hearing the world, let's say, or feeling it, and it's constructed by the brain. It's sort of making a movie of what it thinks is happening out there based on this data and our biases. So, if you think of it like this, you have this sort of stream of information coming in from all of our sensory organs. So, that's coming in one way. Then we have this top-down processing of what we expect things to be based on our history and what we've seen before, because we can't take each individual case as something new, it would be too much processing. So, we have heuristics that we use in expectations, and where that data coming in meets with our expectations, that's where we construct our reality, our sense of what's happening out there. And it's all slightly different for each person.

HAKEEM (00:13:37):

Right.

HEATHER (00:13:37):

So, that's why two different people can have completely different belief systems and views of the world and see things in completely different ways based on what they expect to see, what they want to see, what their biases are, and how they're processing the information coming in.

HAKEEM (00:13:51):

And how they voted in the last election.

HEATHER (00:13:51):

That's exactly right. Which determines everything.

HAKEEM (00:14:00):

That determines everything in America. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:14:01):

So, we're seeing the world through our own perception box.

HAKEEM (00:14:03):

That's right.

HEATHER (00:14:04):

And everyone really believes theirs is really real. But certain things, psychedelic drugs, meditation, flow state can expand our perception box so we can have... Maybe we're all living in this tiny boxes, if we can widen it, we can understand other perspectives or see things in a slightly different way.

HAKEEM (00:14:22):

Yeah. Oh, I've experienced this personally because I lived in the deep South before in the 20th century in a very rural area, and I didn't have access to much of humanity. It was traditional populations in that location. And I leave there and go to graduate school in the San Francisco Bay Area.

HEATHER (00:14:44):

Right. That's a dramatic shift.

HAKEEM (00:14:47):

Dramatic shift. The grocery store is different. Everything is new. And I learned that a lot of the narratives that I had in my mind of the way the world worked, how the world was going to interact with me were completely wrong, but I was perceiving them from the guy I was at age 24, stepping into the Bay Area, the guy I am now who's now been to countries all over the world, every state, but three, very different.

HEATHER (00:15:18):

Yeah. And you wouldn't know it though when... A similar thing happened with me. I grew up in New York, which is a very diverse place. But then when I moved to go to the UK, I went and I studied abroad and then went to graduate school, and then I traveled around Europe, and then I started... And suddenly I had this whole other perspective, and I viewed America differently and whatever, because it used to be, okay and also within America, I'm the north, you are the south, we're very different. But then when we're over there, "Oh, we're all the same there." And it brought into your perspective, it's a really good.

HAKEEM (00:15:49):

It does.

HEATHER (00:15:49):

And I think everybody should try to get out of their own comfort zone.

HAKEEM (00:15:55):

Well, at least you can... And then I think you get closer to the truth of things.

HEATHER (00:16:00):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:16:01):

It's standard observational science that the error in your measurement is dependent upon the number of measurements you make.

HEATHER (00:16:11):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:16:12):

The more you make, the more accurate you become. So, the more you observe humanity, and it's different environments, and it's different manifestations, the better you understand people. And I came to the conclusion, we're all the same.

HEATHER (00:16:24):

Well, I mean, look, you know what? When you look at a brain, you can't tell what nationality, what race, whatever. It looks pretty much the same. You can tell... A lot of the time you can tell male, female, there's certain characteristics, but outside of that, everyone's brain is looking the same on the inside. And we're all the same.

HAKEEM (00:16:45):

Yeah. What you say earlier is that if you have a slice of brain, you can't tell whether it's human or even another species.

HEATHER (00:16:51):

Monkey. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, it's like we're all much more similar than we think. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:16:57):

So, how does our personality maintain itself? Is there some underlying activity that when we're awake, it establishes our personality? And how does this human expression happen?

HEATHER (00:17:15):

I actually did a lot of research earlier on personality. I was really interested in this and what's the neural basis of personality? What's interesting is personality is very consistent across life. You see, there's some minor variations as you get older, there's some changes. But in general, you take a baby and you look at their temperament, you can pretty much predict their kind of personality throughout life. And I can tell you this even from being a mother, I have two children. In utero, feeling them and the way they acted and whatever, they were very different. One was much more active, one was more active at night, the other... And this, and the way the other temperament says babies, and then it really carries through.

(00:17:57):

So, I really think what we call personality is really, and the way it's kind of defined is a consistent way of behaving across different environments and settings. So, that we're looking at personalities, what is consistent about you across time? And that I think is a huge genetic component. But then our brains are living evolving creatures, let's say. It's always changing. This is why, we can get into this conversation, why AI in its current form, I don't think it's going to be conscious or we'd have to build a neuromorphic computer that changes with inputs constantly because our brain is always changing until the day you die.

(00:18:31):

It is changing. Now, it's like a piece of clay. It's really malleable early on, and it starts to harden and gets stiffer and harder to mold, but it's always changing. So, we have these basic, let's say, our fundamental roots of who we are, our core personality. You're a grumpy person, you're whatever. You tend to be happy-go-lucky as a baby, you're going to tend to be throughout life. And there's even studies that show if you win the lottery, you will... Maybe, if let's say you're a grumpy, sad person, you'll get a blip of happiness and you go right back to where you were before.

HAKEEM (00:19:02):

Holy cow.

HEATHER (00:19:03):

And by the way, also, if some tragedy happens, you lose your legs, you can no longer walk, you're a happy-go-lucky person, you get a blip of doubt, and then you become that person again.

HAKEEM (00:19:14):

Wow. Interesting.

HEATHER (00:19:14):

So, even regardless of very impactful things that can happen in your life, personality stays consistent. But that being said, a lot of change in learning goes on within those. So, I think there's certain boundaries that we're in that are genetic set, but within that, we can either be at one end or the other depending on our experiences. But if you're an anxious person, you're never going to be the most relaxed person in the room. But if I'm treating you as a patient, this is your boundaries. I can get you from here to here, but I'm never going to get you over to here because there's certain limitations.

HAKEEM (00:19:44):

I see. Wow. Wow. So, it says a lot about parenting.

HEATHER (00:19:51):

Oh, yeah.

HAKEEM (00:19:53):

You're not the molder of your children. A lot of it is already established while they're even still inside.

HEATHER (00:20:00):

And the research shows, if you look at Steven Pinker, and he's written a lot about this and The Blank Slate, that parents, it's very hard, even as a parent myself, it's so counterintuitive. But really there's no... Unless it's extremes like extreme abuse or something, then that can have an impact. But within the normal bounds, what you do as a parent doesn't have that much impact. Friends do. So, what you can do as a parent is make sure you get them in a place that they're going to be with the right kind of peers, that you want to have an influence on them. So, their peers influence them, their friend's parents can influence them socially, and they'll be more likely to listen to them. So, you can do as a parent is put them in the right environment. But all this stuff that we think is having such a huge impact isn't, and actually as you get older, the influence of genetics become stronger.

HAKEEM (00:20:54):

Really?

HEATHER (00:20:54):

So, it has more of an impact, your genetics as you get older. So, it's like just be all kinds, loving, do what you can, but don't... So, either one, it's great because you don't get to blame yourself for when you mess up. It's not your fault. But also, you don't get to take all the credit when they do extraordinary things.

HAKEEM (00:21:13):

Yeah, yeah. They are their own little human there.

HEATHER (00:21:17):

Yes, you help them... I see my children as I'm just there to help nurture them, help become who they're supposed to be.

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HAKEEM (00:21:22):

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HAKEEM (00:22:09):

Let's play a little game. And the game we're going to play is what's my brain doing?

HEATHER (00:22:17):

Okay.

HAKEEM (00:22:17):

All right?

HEATHER (00:22:17):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:22:21):

I am having déjà vu.

HEATHER (00:22:23):

Oh, that's a hard one.

HAKEEM (00:22:25):

Oh.

HEATHER (00:22:25):

Damn it. Déjà vu. Okay.

HAKEEM (00:22:28):

Is my brain quantum entangled with my future self?

HEATHER (00:22:32):

No.

HAKEEM (00:22:33):

Okay.

HEATHER (00:22:34):

Yeah, I wouldn't go that far. I mean, you never know. I don't know.

HAKEEM (00:22:37):

You never know, right?

HEATHER (00:22:38):

Spooky astrophysicist at a distance, whatever, entanglement. But what I think is going on is that we have a part of our brain that gives a sense of familiarity, something feels familiar to us. And I think it's little... Sometimes our brain does these little missteps or it misfires to things. So, you might walk into a room and you suddenly get this sense of, this feels familiar to me. It feels like I've been here before. And so, your brain then reconstructs the reality. It's trying to make sense of it. And then you sort of get this feeling of déjà vu, "Oh, I've been here before. I've seen this before." And even we can mess around with people's time perception.

(00:23:23):

And I did a lot of research during my PhD about what's the neural basis of time perception? How do we perceive time? And we can link it to certain... And people have certain brain damage, they perceive time differently or certain psychiatric illnesses. So, we can link it to underlying neural correlates. And we can also play around with when a person perceives that something happened in time. So, I can have something happen to you and then we do something TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, put a little magnet here, zap you a little, and suddenly you're like, "Oh, no, it happened over here." You can move people's-

HAKEEM (00:23:55):

Oh, you can stimulate my brain to-

HEATHER (00:23:57):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:23:57):

... change the place and time where things-

HEATHER (00:23:59):

Where you feel things happen, and also your sense of agency. How much control did I have over that movement? And so, our brains are tricky because we're also constructing our sense of time. So, I think there's these little tripwires in the brain where there are little flaws in the matrix. That's what illusions are, right? When we discover the little holes, and the brain is constructing things, but it's not perfect. And when things don't make sense... I say a brain is a meaning-maker machine. It wants to make meaning out of things. So, you walk into a room, suddenly things feel familiar, then it starts to construct a new reality, "Oh, I must've been here before. I must have seen this before."

HAKEEM (00:24:36):

Is there a novelty center as well? Like you said, there's a familiarity center.

HEATHER (00:24:37):

Yeah. I hesitate to call things centers. I'd say a circuit.

HAKEEM (00:24:40):

Well, not centers, circuit.

HEATHER (00:24:41):

A circuit. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:24:41):

Okay. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:24:42):

But yeah, of course, novelty. I mean, dopamine is released with novelty. Our brain loves novelty because it's important for us to attend to things that are novel, because that could be something dangerous. It could be... It says like, "Hey, pay attention to this thing."

HAKEEM (00:24:56):

Right.

HEATHER (00:24:57):

So, it's more related to attending to things, but novelty sometimes when it's associated with pleasure as well, and you can increase caveman's activation, we tend to like novelty because evolutionarily, it makes sense to attend to things that are novel for better chances to survive.

HAKEEM (00:25:15):

Right. Right. Right. Okay. So, back to what's my brain doing?

HEATHER (00:25:18):

Okay. Okay.

HAKEEM (00:25:19):

Suppose I'm watching something or I listen to something particularly moving, and I get goosebumps.

HEATHER (00:25:25):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:25:25):

What's happening?

HEATHER (00:25:26):

So, that is an interesting thing, and I think it has to do with this feeling of sometimes with awe, this sense of awe, where you hear a piece of music, you see a vista, you have some emotional, something emotional that triggers you, it's very much related to a brain stem. It's lower in the brain. It's a very physiologic reaction that something triggers us, maybe emotionally and then it triggers this nervous system response.

HAKEEM (00:26:01):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:26:01):

It's an automatic response, just like crying is, this autonomic nervous system response where it's almost like you don't have control over it, but it can be triggered by different emotional experiences.

HAKEEM (00:26:16):

Interesting. Sometimes we have questions of what do other animals think or feel? So, is it the case that those fundamental basal feelings like awe, what leads us to cry manifest similarly in other mammals? Or does it have to be other primates or?

HEATHER (00:26:36):

I do think that other animals have basic sensations like this, but we interpret them differently. And that, for example, you can have a certain physiologic sensation in you like you feel butterflies in your stomach or something. And then once we get that sensation, then our higher cortices, prefrontal cortex starts to interpret that as either, "Oh, I'm really anxious about something." Or, "I'm really nervous." Or, "I'm really excited about this thing." And we could reinterpret the same physiologic sensation in different ways. And so, other animals might just have sensations and not interpret them, so they don't sort of elevate them to these other... You might start feeling some sensation of crying. Then you start thinking of, "Oh, my God, I'm thinking of my grandmother," or whatever. And then it becomes more and more and more, and it elevates it. So, I think other animals have different feelings, but they don't have these more complex feelings that we have like envy and jealousy or lust, and because they don't also can't think that far into the future. They don't have as evolved prefrontal cortex, which thinks about the future.

HAKEEM (00:27:41):

That's right.

HEATHER (00:27:42):

So, anxiety is really a very human emotion because it's about fear of something bad happening in the future. Animals have fear, other animals, but not so much anxiety.

HAKEEM (00:27:52):

It's more the here and the now.

HEATHER (00:27:53):

Yes, it's the things that are happening right now, but not like, "Oh, my God, in two days I'm going to have this exam." Or, "I'm going to have..."

HAKEEM (00:27:58):

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:27:59):

So, they don't have these more complex emotions that we have, but there's these beautiful images like with them, Jane Goodall... And there's these apes looking out at the vista, and it looks as if they're-

HAKEEM (00:28:10):

Oh, really? They're experiencing the beauty and-

HEATHER (00:28:12):

The beauty or animals like Jaak Panksepp was someone, a colleague I knew for a long time. He unfortunately passed away, but he always talked about these rats that would like tickle. You can tickle the rats, and they would laugh. He recorded their laughter, and they would play and they would... So, they're experiencing things like joy, but it's just very much in the moment.

HAKEEM (00:28:34):

Right. Right. Wow. That is something. What about when, for example, I leave my keys in the refrigerator. What has my brain done?

HEATHER (00:28:43):

I think you need to come to my office.

HAKEEM (00:28:46):

Oh, you ain't heard nothing yet. Oh, boy. Do I need treatment?

HEATHER (00:28:55):

So misplacing objects or-

HAKEEM (00:28:56):

Misplacing objects, I walk into a room, I forget what my thought was, these forgetful, or I'm looking for my keys, and they're in my hand the whole time.

HEATHER (00:29:04):

Right, yes.

HAKEEM (00:29:05):

Yes. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:29:06):

So, various reasons, not one answer for everything, but the sort elements that seem to be involved are attention. So, you might've had an intent to go into a room, and then first of all, your mind is wandering. Then you start thinking about, "What's my grocery list? Oh, what's the thing I got to do later?" Whatever.

HAKEEM (00:29:27):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:29:27):

So, now that memory of why you went in the room slipped away. You knew there was a purpose of going in there, but you had moved on to other things.

HAKEEM (00:29:35):

Yeah, my brain started thinking about something else.

HEATHER (00:29:37):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:29:37):

That's why. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:29:37):

And then suddenly you're like, "Why am I here?" Or-

HAKEEM (00:29:40):

Right.

HEATHER (00:29:41):

So, a lot of it has do with attention and memory, and there's different parts of the brain that do, like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has to do with working memory. So, that's like when you're trying to remember four digits, seven digits, a number or something, you got to keep it on saying it over and over again.

HAKEEM (00:29:57):

Right. Right.

HEATHER (00:29:57):

But then when you have something in more long-term memory, it moves over to the hippocampus. But usually these things like your keys where you're putting them, whatever, that's the kind of working short-term memory. And if you don't stay attending to what you're doing or focus on where your keys are, it's going to slip away because your mind starts attending internally to other things, especially people with ADHD, it becomes even harder. And then, yeah, of course with age, there's normal aging brain where memory starts to get not as sharp.

HAKEEM (00:30:28):

Right, exactly. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:30:29):

So, if you really want to remember where your keys are or whatever, you have to stay focused on that. So, you're like, "I know I'm going in this room." And keep remembering why you're going in the room, says, "I'm going to get my keys. I'm going to get my keys"

HAKEEM (00:30:38):

That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:30:39):

Just the second you go off that, you're-

HAKEEM (00:30:40):

It's done.

HEATHER (00:30:40):

You're done.

HAKEEM (00:30:43):

I know that. I tell people that when I work with them, I was like, "Listen, if we come up with a task for me, make sure you see me, put it in my calendar before."

HEATHER (00:30:54):

And I always say this, "Do it now. Write it down."

HAKEEM (00:30:57):

Absolutely.

HEATHER (00:30:57):

"You think you're going to remember. You're not going to remember."

HAKEEM (00:30:57):

You're not. Yeah, I know I'm not. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:30:57):

No.

HAKEEM (00:31:02):

So, I always tell my students, "Never take work out of the room. If you can avoid it, don't take work out of the room, get it done now."

HEATHER (00:31:08):

Do it now. And if not, just write it down. Write it down. Don't trust your brain that much.

HAKEEM (00:31:12):

Now, let's talk about drugs.

HEATHER (00:31:14):

Oh, yeah.

HAKEEM (00:31:15):

What happens, for example, when someone takes hallucinogenics?

HEATHER (00:31:19):

Mm-hmm.

HAKEEM (00:31:22):

It is kind of like dreaming because your brain has created stuff that's not happening in actual reality, but you're awake.

HEATHER (00:31:30):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:31:30):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:31:31):

It's so fascinating. So, it depends on the drug. Each drug has a different-

HAKEEM (00:31:35):

Well, that's why I said hallucinogenics, to separate it from say, marijuana.

HEATHER (00:31:39):

Right.

HAKEEM (00:31:39):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:31:39):

So, let's talk about psilocybin-

HAKEEM (00:31:41):

Psilocybin.

HEATHER (00:31:42):

... which is the ingredient in shrooms.

HAKEEM (00:31:44):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:31:44):

Psychedelic ingredient, mushrooms. That's a cool one. We've done neuroimaging studies to look at what's happening in the brain when people are in these states. And it's fascinating because what it seems to be is that, I wouldn't say you're at a... Some people used to say it's a higher level of consciousness. No, there's no higher or lower. It's either you're conscious or you're not, but it's a different state of consciousness. So, we have different states of consciousness. We're experiencing the world in different ways. Now, normally in a non-drugged, healthy, awake brain, you're getting all this information, it's actually chaos. And then our brain has all these constraints to make it have a clear, accurate picture, right? But you take somebody with schizophrenia or another mental health disorders with psychosis, they're not constructing the reality in a constrained way. It becomes an unconstrained brain.

(00:32:36):

If your brain is in that state all the time, that's not a good state to be in because you can't navigate the world. You need to be able to filter out the sort of non-essential information and construct this reality we talked about.

HAKEEM (00:32:47):

Because there is that phenomenon in psychedelics where you're like, "Oh, that cloud looks like a dragon," and then it becomes a dragon.

HEATHER (00:32:54):

Right. Because the constraints are no longer there. So, what we see in the brain is that it becomes an unconstrained brain temporarily. Now, a schizophrenic is in that state all the time. That's not healthy. But if you would temporarily... The prefrontal cortex is the executor of the brain, and it's kind of constraining things and making things make sense, making meaning out of it. You take that filter off, your brain starts firing in a different way when you're on these psychedelics, and it becomes unconstrained, which is great because anything goes, creativity. You're thinking new thoughts, you're getting to access unconscious things. It is a lovely state to be in temporarily, but then you do want to go back to that more constrained brain state. But when you're in this state, people they lose their sense of self. They feel one with everything. The boundary between self and other gets sort of dissolved.

HAKEEM (00:33:44):

Oh, interesting.

HEATHER (00:33:44):

People associate that with very positive experience. You feel like there's things greater than you. So, fear of death starts to go away, especially the more intense like the 5-MeO, whatever, really like the toad, the drug-

HAKEEM (00:33:55):

Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:33:57):

Yeah. People shoot off into space.

HAKEEM (00:33:58):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:33:58):

They're like, "I died and came back." But they lose their fear of death because it becomes not about you and your ego in this construct, because who we are is a construct of our brain.

HAKEEM (00:34:06):

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:34:07):

We're making up our who, I'm this person, whatever. So, that's kind of dissolves, and you get this openness. And so, we're starting to understand what's happening at the neural basis, and it's being used now to help treat people with psychiatric illnesses like obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression and PTSD like MDMA, to help people get into these other brain states to help resolve some of the issues when they get locked into these negative brain states or negative thought patterns.

HAKEEM (00:34:36):

Yeah, which reminds me, there is a phrase I've used for a long time to talk about how I deal with my own brain, and I call it mental engineering. And what that is for me, what I say to myself to get myself to do what I need myself to do, given the way my brain is operating on its own, I got to sort of retrain it. So, the classic example I give is flying, right? I started flying relatively late in life in my early 30s.

HEATHER (00:35:06):

You mean flying a plane or being in a plane?

HAKEEM (00:35:09):

No, no, no, being a passenger in a plane.

HEATHER (00:35:10):

Okay. Okay.

HAKEEM (00:35:10):

Yeah. And by the time I did that, I had taken fluid dynamics as a physicist, I knew Bernoulli's equation. I understand how lift works, but when I get up tens of thousands of feet in the air and look down, I'm like, "This ain't right."

HEATHER (00:35:23):

Right, exactly. Yeah. As a human-

HAKEEM (00:35:24):

I don't feel comfortable. And so, one of the things I did at that time, there was a reality show about phobias, and I remember one of the therapists telling the person, "Just because you imagine something, doesn't mean it's going to happen." And so, I started to say that to myself, right?

HEATHER (00:35:43):

Right.

HAKEEM (00:35:44):

Like, "Oh, just because you imagined..." Right. And so I did that. Another thing is, for example, when I was early in my career, I was starting from behind. I wasn't well-educated and I had to work really hard. And so, I would tell myself these stories like, "Oh, while they're sleeping, I'm working. While they're partying, I'm working."

HEATHER (00:36:05):

Yeah. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:36:05):

And these stories I tell myself to engineer my mind into ignoring fear, ignoring pain, things that would normally make me stop or prevent me from doing what I want to do, I tell myself stories.

HEATHER (00:36:22):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:36:22):

So, how plastic is the brain?

HEATHER (00:36:27):

There's a few things there, and we can talk about free will and how much control do we really have, but-

HAKEEM (00:36:33):

There is that.

HEATHER (00:36:33):

... I love this kind of way you've put it. It's kind of an analogy, what did you call it? Mental engineering?

HAKEEM (00:36:39):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:36:40):

It's really, that's CBT. It's Cognitive behavioral therapy.

HAKEEM (00:36:43):

Oh.

HEATHER (00:36:44):

Because that's-

HAKEEM (00:36:44):

I've heard that phrase.

HEATHER (00:36:45):

... what we're trying to do in therapy is that your pain, let's just say, or your fear is a construct of your mind. It's of your own making. People put themselves into their own cage. And if you can somehow re-engineer, change some of those thought patterns, you can change how you feel. You can change how you behave because there's the thoughts, the feelings, and the behavior.

HAKEEM (00:37:10):

Right.

HEATHER (00:37:10):

And they're all interconnected. So, you can make change at any one of those. You can change your behavior. I say to you, "Go on planes no matter what and over time, your brain will realize nothing bad happens, and then the fear will go away."

HAKEEM (00:37:21):

Hopefully.

HEATHER (00:37:22):

Hopefully, you can change your thoughts. But if I tell you, if you have a fear of flying and everything I tell you about, it's safe, it's all the statistics, whatever, that's not going to change your fear.

HAKEEM (00:37:32):

Right.

HEATHER (00:37:33):

You actually have to do it. You have to do it to train your brain. It's like if I tell you everything about how to do abs-

HAKEEM (00:37:39):

Information isn't going to change behavior.

HEATHER (00:37:42):

No. You have to actually do it. And then your brain sees, "Oh, nothing bad happened. I'm going to change my algorithm."

HAKEEM (00:37:47):

So, you have to practice.

HEATHER (00:37:47):

You got to practice. And then you also can work on the thought patterns, but perception can change our reality. So, if you can shift your perception like there is... Carol Dweck talks a lot about this growth mindset. And if you tell yourself, "Well, I can't do it. I'm never going to do it." Then you're not going to do it.

HAKEEM (00:38:05):

Right, exactly. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:38:06):

If you say you can do anything, I remember my dad gave me advice when I was younger. It always stuck with you. It was the simplest thing. But he was just like, "Never stop yourself. You keep going until somebody else stops you. And even then you keep going."

HAKEEM (00:38:17):

Oh, wow.

HEATHER (00:38:17):

Because if you stop yourself and say, "I can't do it." Then you'll definitely not get anywhere.

HAKEEM (00:38:21):

That's right. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:38:21):

You go until somebody stops you, and even then you keep going. Never be self-limiting.

HAKEEM (00:38:27):

Right. Right.

HEATHER (00:38:28):

Because we can be our own worst enemies. So, this idea that we can reconstruct... So, in terms of how plastic are we-

HAKEEM (00:38:34):

Let me vibe with you on that a couple of times. There's two things. One, when I was a graduate student and I had got over the hurdles, and I saw that there were others younger than me struggling, my advice to them was, because what I saw happening is that you feel so dejected, you feel so less than, you quit. So, my advice to students was, "Don't quit. Let them kick you out."

HEATHER (00:38:59):

Right.

HAKEEM (00:38:59):

Because they never do for the most part, right?

HEATHER (00:39:02):

Exactly. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:39:02):

And then the other thing that comes to mind is, someone said this to me and they misquoted it, but the way they said it to me, I like it better than the original quote. And the statement goes, "If you think you can do something, you're probably right. If you think you can't do something, you're definitely right."

HEATHER (00:39:23):

Right. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. You're definitely not going to get anywhere if you tell yourself you can't do it. If you tell yourself you can, there might be a chance you can do it.

HAKEEM (00:39:30):

Right. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:39:31):

Why not?

HAKEEM (00:39:31):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:39:32):

Everybody never... I don't know, Obama, I'm going to be president. People go, "What?" But that's ridiculous.

HAKEEM (00:39:38):

I didn't see that one coming.

HEATHER (00:39:42):

No. But you keep telling yourself, "I can do this. I can do it." And then you know what, why can't you?

HAKEEM (00:39:45):

Why can't you? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:39:46):

You start seeing people at the top, you're like, "That's the person at the top. I thought there was a..."

HAKEEM (00:39:51):

Well, it doesn't look that way to you when you're in your 20s and your 30s. Once you get older, you're like-

HEATHER (00:39:55):

You realize-

HAKEEM (00:39:55):

"They're idiots."

HEATHER (00:40:00):

"Nobody knows anything."

HAKEEM (00:40:00):

Exactly.

HEATHER (00:40:00):

Actually, there was a point when I was like, "Wait, I'm the expert?"

HAKEEM (00:40:01):

Right. I know the feeling, yeah.

HEATHER (00:40:05):

Yeah. But it's like... Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:40:05):

I like to say back in the day, we had, I'm a physicist. We had Einstein Dirac, Pauli. Today is us, me and Debbie and [inaudible 00:40:14].

HEATHER (00:40:14):

Right. Right. Right.

HAKEEM (00:40:14):

Humanity is doomed.

HEATHER (00:40:14):

Right. You're like, "We're in charge now. What happened?" But to your question of how plastic are we? How changeable are we? I do feel-

HAKEEM (00:40:24):

And are there methods? That's the other thing.

HEATHER (00:40:26):

Yes. I think everybody is capable of change, as I said before, with the certain constraints of our biology, right?

HAKEEM (00:40:32):

What about introducing the psychedelics into these cognitive behavioral therapies?

HEATHER (00:40:38):

That's a huge game changer. I've been in the field of neuroscience and psychiatry and research for decades, and there hasn't been a fundamental shift in say, treatment of psychiatric illnesses in terms of psychopharmacology for 50 years. I mean, it's all, okay. You have SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors that are affecting the serotonin receptors, and they're all variations on a theme. "Oh, we're going to slightly do this other receptor now, we're going to do that." But it's just playing around with different combinations of drugs. Then you have this psychedelic psychotherapy, which is a huge shift. I mean, I've seen people who've tried everything. They're depressed. They do all sorts of... We do deep brain stimulation. You have to go in and plant electrodes. That's neurosurgery, right? There's some risks involved there. Instead, you can have these people have fundamental shifts in their symptomology with ketamine right now is FDA approved? So, a lot of patients are doing ketamine.

HAKEEM (00:41:34):

I've heard ketamine talked about a lot recently in therapy.

HEATHER (00:41:38):

Yes. Yes.

HAKEEM (00:41:38):

Can you describe that for us?

HEATHER (00:41:39):

It's amazing. I mean, look, it's not like a panacea. It's not like everyone who does it is going to get 100% better, right? But for a certain population of people who have tried everything, it really can help with say, depression. They give it now in psychiatric, in the ER for people who are actively suicidal. It can actually just like... You give it, and it takes away the suicidality in the moment for people. So, it's very impactful. And again, it's not everybody and it's-

HAKEEM (00:42:10):

So, what happens in the brain? Is it like I-

HEATHER (00:42:10):

... not 100%.

HAKEEM (00:42:10):

... have some serotonin and dopamine?

HEATHER (00:42:12):

So, there's this glutamatergic theory of depression. So, everybody was so focused on serotonin and the serotonin receptors, and then there becomes to deal, what about the glutamatergic system? And that seems to also be involved. And ketamine is interacting with another... It's another neurotransmitter.

HAKEEM (00:42:27):

Okay, so another chemical in the brain.

HEATHER (00:42:28):

Yes, another chemical in the brain. But what we're really trying to understand is, is it... And this is I think with all the psychedelics. So, you have ketamine for depression and anxiety, you have psilocybin also for anxiety and depression, MDMA for PTSD. We're trying to understand, is it the chemical interactions of the drug itself in the brain that's making these changes? Or is it actually the psychological experience that people are having that are having these... Because the thing is with SSRIs, you have to take them every day. They have to be in your system to have an impact. And when they wear off, they're off. And you take them again the next day. These, you can do a couple of experiences.

HAKEEM (00:43:06):

That's right. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:43:07):

And then it has a fundamental shift that lasts. And we think that, for example, psilocybin increases the brain's neuroplasticity. So, you become more open and more open to suggestions. So, when you do that in conjunction with therapy, it's not just like, "Hey, go out and party and do mushrooms."

HAKEEM (00:43:21):

Right. Right.

HEATHER (00:43:21):

But when you take them with the therapist that it makes the therapy more sticky.

HAKEEM (00:43:26):

Well, that's what I was going to ask. Does the setting matter? And is the setting staged for the therapeutic effect?

HEATHER (00:43:33):

Yeah. So, there's a lot of people who are talking about the setting and that there's certain settings that have more of an impact. However, another colleague of mine, Stanford did this amazing study. He wanted to look at the effects of ketamine without the psychological effects, just the chemical effects. So, he's an anesthesiologist. So, what he did, he took people with depression when they're going under surgery, gave them ketamine while they were under anesthesia, and then saw if it had an impact. So, they didn't consciously know.

HAKEEM (00:44:01):

They didn't consciously experience the ketamine experience.

HEATHER (00:44:04):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:44:05):

But they did have the ketamine chemical.

HEATHER (00:44:06):

Yes, exactly. And what he found, which was interesting, is that it had a significant impact if the people thought they had the ketamine. So, it was a placebo effect. When the people believed they really had the ketamine there actually depression got better. So, it might just be that having this... Someone tells you, "Look, you're going to go in and have this amazing experience. It's going to fundamentally shift." Your perception is changing.

HAKEEM (00:44:30):

Holy cow.

HEATHER (00:44:31):

And that might be a large part of it is this placebo effect. You have this amazing psychedelic experience, and then you're like... And so, we still don't fully know what it is, but a lot of my patients are in ketamine treatment, and they report really positive experience with it.

HAKEEM (00:44:47):

So, what does it say? Does this say that our thoughts are just chemicals, right? We're all just... We're a chemical reaction with a chemical reaction.

HEATHER (00:44:59):

We are our brains, and I wouldn't say they're just that. We still don't really understand this leap from neurochemicals and electrical impulses firing around in our brain and our subjective experience, and that... Dave Chalmers, the philosopher, calls us the hard problem of consciousness. The easy problem is if we could map every thought you have and every experience to the specific set of neurons firing in your brain like the one-to-one correlation.

HAKEEM (00:45:24):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:45:24):

That's actually a really hard problem, but ultimately, we could theoretically do that at some point.

HAKEEM (00:45:28):

Yes. Yes.

HEATHER (00:45:28):

But even if we did that, I mapped every thought you have to the exact neural underpinnings, why is it that those neurochemicals firing around create this subjective experience of a thought? And that's the million-dollar question. And that's the hard problem. We might never know.

HAKEEM (00:45:43):

When I think about an animal like an octopus that has a more distributed set of neurons, and I think about the fact of we have this neuronal concentration, this condensation we call our brain. Is that even necessary? I was thinking a while ago about why is the head the head?

HEATHER (00:46:06):

Oh, yeah. It's not like my son. He's eight. "Mommy. Why is the head the head?"

HAKEEM (00:46:16):

Well, I thought I was like, "Oh, here's all the sensors."

HEATHER (00:46:17):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:46:18):

And they put the sensors close to the processor. That's why we have a head, right?

HEATHER (00:46:24):

Right. Yeah. No, I mean, I never thought about that.

HAKEEM (00:46:27):

But then I learned about an octopus. They're like, "Oh, they got neurons all through their bodies." And then I was like, "Oh, there's a brain in the belly."

HEATHER (00:46:33):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:46:34):

There's the stomach-

HEATHER (00:46:34):

We have more serotonin receptors in our stomach than we do in our brain.

HAKEEM (00:46:37):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:46:37):

But it's how they're connected.

HAKEEM (00:46:39):

It's how they're connected.

HEATHER (00:46:40):

But with an octopus is really interesting because they are very intelligent.

HAKEEM (00:46:44):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:46:44):

It's almost like they're aliens.

HAKEEM (00:46:45):

I think they are.

HEATHER (00:46:46):

I think they might come from another planet because they evolved on a different line, right? Another different-

HAKEEM (00:46:51):

They're mollusks.

HEATHER (00:46:52):

Yes. So, I mean, there is people, like I said, with this integrated information theory of consciousness that say consciousness is a property of the universe like gravity. It exists in any system that has these particular set of properties and this integrated information. And so an octopus has it in a different way, but it's this fundamental property of the universe that any system could have theoretically.

HAKEEM (00:47:22):

Yeah. Yeah. Geez. Holy moly. So, what's happening in your brain when you meditate, and why is meditation good for you?

HEATHER (00:47:34):

Yeah. What's interesting is that they find that there's some similar patterns of brain activation and deactivation in the brain when you meditate as there are when you're on psychedelics, as there are when you are in creative flow states.

HAKEEM (00:47:46):

Oh, my God. I was going to ask you about creative flow states. Let's come back to that.

HEATHER (00:47:48):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:47:48):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:47:49):

So, they're similar, and certain parts of the prefrontal cortex have decreased activation. And those parts have to do with our sense of self. And it's the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which I've talked about before, which is involved in working memory, but also to do with our sense of filtering our behavior to make sure it conforms with social norms. But when you take that filter off in a way, when you decrease activation, anything goes, there's a freedom. And also that's the part where rumination is happening. What are people thinking about me? The anxiety, the overthinking. When you turn that part down, whether it's through flow states, psychedelics or through meditation, you can't both be in that state and have the rumination at the same time. So, it kind of decreases all of those anxiety thoughts. It decreases our sense of self. We feel connected or at one with everything. Our sense of time seems to dissolve and it's really pleasurable to be in these states, and it seems to be really therapeutic.

(00:48:49):

It also gives us access to some things that are normally suppressed by that part of the brain into the unconscious. It can suddenly come up because it's no longer suppressed. And that's like MDMA, when people have PTSD and they're suppressing all this trauma. You give MDMA, it releases some of these memories and feelings that are suppressed, but you're doing it within a safe environment. And when your nervous system is calm so that you're able to actually process and work through them. But it helps us get... So, getting these states associated with very positive emotions, and they tend to be very therapeutic. And meditation's an easy one. You don't need drugs for it.

HAKEEM (00:49:26):

Right.

HEATHER (00:49:26):

I mean, drugs like.

HAKEEM (00:49:27):

It's free.

HEATHER (00:49:27):

Yeah, it's free. You don't need... But drugs are a quick, you get there real quick. But not everybody wants to do drugs, and I don't think that they should. There's negative side effects-

HAKEEM (00:49:37):

Yeah. Especially as you get older.

HEATHER (00:49:39):

Yeah. And then also, not every drug... I was on a panel once about psychedelics and everyone's talking about how great they're, but they're also some people that have bad experiences and are anxious about it. And actually some people can get traumatized.

HAKEEM (00:49:50):

Yeah. I've known people who've been traumatized.

HEATHER (00:49:51):

Yeah. From these experiences. So, what's a different way to get there? Meditation, creative flow states.

HAKEEM (00:49:57):

Right. But you mentioned the creative flow state. So, I mentioned I was a musician, and sometimes I would go into this flow state where it was the concert type musician.

HEATHER (00:50:14):

Where did you play?

HAKEEM (00:50:14):

I'm a tubist.

HEATHER (00:50:14):

Oh, wow.

HAKEEM (00:50:14):

Yes. But I was doing this concert music. You're playing these long pieces and you're reading the music. I would go into the flow state, and at that point, I didn't really feel like I was conscious or even present and everything is just going perfectly. And then I come to an awareness of that's happening, and it completely throws me off.

HEATHER (00:50:35):

And that [inaudible 00:50:36]. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:50:36):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:50:36):

Totally. That's the thing. Our unconscious can do much more than consciousness in many ways. Once you've trained the brain, let's say you've studied the instrument for many years, your brain knows which notes to hit and whatever. Or let's say you're a tennis pro, you've practiced many years. Initially it had to be conscious. You had to think about every way. But once it becomes implicit and it's part of your brain, your unconscious can process many more variables. It's unlimited as far as we know than consciousness, which is very specific, but limited.

HAKEEM (00:51:12):

So, it's almost like your conscious brain is a computer and your unconscious brain is a quantum computer.

HEATHER (00:51:18):

Ooh, I like that analogy. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that. Yes.

HAKEEM (00:51:21):

It works in parallel.

HEATHER (00:51:24):

Yes, exactly.

HAKEEM (00:51:24):

In a state of superposition.

HEATHER (00:51:24):

Superposition, exactly. I like that. Yeah. And so, let's say you're playing tennis or you think, "What angle exactly should I hit this ball?" You're going to get out of that flow state.

HAKEEM (00:51:35):

That's right.

HEATHER (00:51:35):

Because you're turning on these parts of the prefrontal cortex. You're not letting your brain do what it knows how to do, and you're getting in the way, your consciousness gets in the way. So, it's not always good to have... Once you've done all the work and the practice, then you got to let go to be in that performance mode. I remember another analogy I like is I was hiking with a friend. We were at Caltech and we were coming down the mountain, and I'm going each step thinking, "Where do I step next?" It's taking me forever. And he's like... He's a German neuroscientist. He goes, "Just run down." I can't do a German accent. And he was, "Just run. Your feet know where to go. Let your body go and do its thing. It knows how to navigate it."

HAKEEM (00:52:14):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:52:14):

If you're thinking too hard about it it's going to take forever.

HAKEEM (00:52:16):

Right.

HEATHER (00:52:17):

And he was right actually, it was just running down. My body knew all the physics and the angles of how to navigate to step down this mountain.

HAKEEM (00:52:25):

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:52:25):

So, it was like a mountain, but you know what I mean? And so sometimes you have to get out of your own way.

HAKEEM (00:52:31):

I saw that, I think it may have been a movie or something, but they were going to ski through a forest. And the person was like, "You look at the path, not the trees."

HEATHER (00:52:39):

Right.

HAKEEM (00:52:39):

"If you look at the tree, you're going to ski into a tree."

HEATHER (00:52:42):

Right.

HAKEEM (00:52:42):

You look at the path.

HEATHER (00:52:43):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:52:43):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:52:44):

And your brain knows like you always, I once met with this... I did this discovery challenge show where we met all these super humans and people who could do extraordinary things. And I was trying to figure out how they could do it. And I met this guy who's the quickest shooter and most accurate shooter. So, he had this little shotgun, was down in Louisiana, and he could just go and get all the targets and your conscious brain doesn't have-

HAKEEM (00:53:03):

No way to do that.

HEATHER (00:53:04):

... enough time to think about it.

HAKEEM (00:53:05):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:53:06):

Yeah. So, he said, "I'm not even thinking about it. I'm already looking ahead at the next thing. My body's doing what it knows what to do, and I'm already calculating, looking ahead and then it's kind of falling behind." Because you can't process that, do that in a conscious way. It becomes so integrated in that, it becomes implicit and then you got to get out of your way and let go. But when anything, you're doing performance, you're giving a talk. If you become, "Oh, my God, how are they thinking about me? How am I doing?" Self-aware, you fall of the flow state. So, you got to let go.

HAKEEM (00:53:35):

You got to let go.

HEATHER (00:53:35):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:53:36):

Yeah. That's something to put on a T-shirt.

HEATHER (00:53:39):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:53:39):

You got to let go.

HEATHER (00:53:40):

Exactly. And that's what my book is about, letting go. How do we let go? See.

HAKEEM (00:53:44):

What is it? Do you have a title for your book yet?

HEATHER (00:53:46):

It's the fine art of losing control. It can be good to let go and lose control in a controlled way.

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HAKEEM (00:53:52):

If this episode gets your brain buzzing, be sure to rate us, leave us a review or comment and subscribe so you don't miss out on more mind-bending content. Your support is not a placebo. It really helps us reach more curious minds and helps us to bring you more great conversations.

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(00:54:12):

So, what about creativity? Is there a neurological, or is that the right word, neurological basis for creativity? Is there a way to spark your creativity? I'm just going to confess.

HEATHER (00:54:22):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:54:22):

I'm just going to confess.

HEATHER (00:54:25):

Yes.

HAKEEM (00:54:25):

In 2022, I was looking to get my second book going and I was stuck. So, I hear about micro-dosing, so I go get myself some micro-dosage and it worked.

HEATHER (00:54:42):

Okay. Let me tell you about this. Yes.

HAKEEM (00:54:43):

Okay.

HEATHER (00:54:44):

First of all, I'm very interested in the neural basis of creativity because I'm interested in the neural basis of how do we get access to our unconscious, because the neural basis of consciousness is one thing, but like I said before, the unconscious is doing most of the work. So, what's going on? What's the neural basis of the unconscious and how do we access it and creativity? And also myself, I'm a painter and I studied fine art and did theater. So, I always want to integrate the science and the arts and what are these flow states. But the thing with the micro-dosing is that they actually did research on this. And everyone in Silicon Valley and all these tech people, micro-dosing makes you more creative. It actually doesn't.

HAKEEM (00:55:24):

Oh.

HEATHER (00:55:24):

So, what you had was a placebo effect.

HAKEEM (00:55:26):

I had a placebo effect, or maybe it was just the timing.

HEATHER (00:55:28):

Or maybe you accidentally macro-dosed because you only got a macro-dose to get to the creative states.

HAKEEM (00:55:33):

So, I did macro.

HEATHER (00:55:33):

It's not the micro.

HAKEEM (00:55:35):

I was scared. I'm like, "I got to control it." Okay. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:55:38):

But actually the micro-dosing doesn't increase creativity. We see this from studies, so a lot of it is anecdotal or maybe a little bit of the placebo effect, whatever works.

HAKEEM (00:55:48):

So, I got the placebo effect. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:55:49):

You told your brain, "I'm getting into this state," and then suddenly you're in that and you hit your stride. But with creativity, what we see is a pattern of activation. Put people in a scanner. They did freestyle rappers compared to doing a memorized rap or jazz improvisers doing a piano versus doing a memorized piece. And there's differences in brain activation when you're in these creative flow states, or spontaneous creativity or spontaneous improvisation, whatever you want to call it. Again, you have decreased activation of the dorsolateral cortex. You have increased activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, which has to do with the generation of new ideas coming from within. So, the filter is turned down, your sense of self is turned down, but the sort of flow of information, and some people say it feels like it's coming through me from somewhere else because their sense of self is turned down.

(00:56:44):

But it's based on everything, all the input you've put in your brain over all the years, all the training you've done, all the whatever, you're writing a book, all the information, all the experiences you've had, they're all in there.

HAKEEM (00:56:54):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:56:55):

But you have to get into a flow state to release that for it to come together in all these new novel ways. And so, we're starting to see that it's not the antiquated idea of left brain, right brain, right? Like, "Oh, your right brain's creative, you're left brain."

HAKEEM (00:57:08):

Right.

HEATHER (00:57:09):

It's not like that. It's really, you get into these different brain states and some people talk about the default mode state, whereas just default mode just means what your brain is doing when you're not explicitly focused in on doing a task. It's like free daydreaming, free thought.

HAKEEM (00:57:24):

To what degree can we have a control panel for our brain? So, for example-

HEATHER (00:57:31):

Like an inside out?

HAKEEM (00:57:33):

Right. Or I was thinking more of the Starship Enterprise.

HEATHER (00:57:36):

Oh, okay. Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:57:36):

The captain's chair. But I'm thinking about things like, okay, there are people that feel anxiety like, "Oh, I want to turn down anxiety." There are people like, "Oh, I need to be creative to create. Oh, I need to turn up creativity. Oh, I need to turn off my inhibitions. I got to give a talk." Or, "I got to do a performance." Are there known ways that are not like take a pill that allow you to tune in the brain performance or brain state that you need?

HEATHER (00:58:05):

That you want?

HAKEEM (00:58:06):

Yeah.

HEATHER (00:58:07):

Yeah. It depends. I mean, there's different techniques that work for different people. So, some people, if you want to try to relax or turn down the anxiety, maybe deep breathing works for you. Maybe yoga works for you, going for a walk, talking to a friend. It's not one size fits all.

HAKEEM (00:58:22):

Got it.

HEATHER (00:58:22):

I think people need to figure out what their particular brain needs to get into those states. And once you discover that, then you have your toolkit. So, I wish it was one thing like "Okay, now do this for that and do this for that."

HAKEEM (00:58:38):

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (00:58:38):

But because everybody's brain is different, everybody's history is different, their triggers are different. What I do with patients is figure out what works for them.

HAKEEM (00:58:46):

Right. So, it's sort of like when I started taking the acting classes back in 1999, and there was this thing about being, I forget the phrase, but it is learning yourself. It was like, "Okay, the idea of acting is not to act, but to literally be." And so, when you're in life and you experience an emotion, recognize that, stop, go in the mirror and do it again. So you know what you're like when you experience that emotion so you can be that.

HEATHER (00:59:17):

It's like method acting a bit like figuring out what your... Yeah.

HAKEEM (00:59:22):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, it's not... Right. So, I forgot where I was going with that.

HEATHER (00:59:26):

Yeah, just be in the moment and be who you are. Well, I think each, all of us-

HAKEEM (00:59:34):

Oh, that's the thing. You have to become self-realized is what they call it. Self-realized. So, this is another sort of way of becoming self-realized. In order to manage your own mind and consciousness and feelings, then you have to make that connection between what... So, I'll give you another example. One of the most difficult things a person has to go through is getting over addiction. That is a huge brain thing. And there's different types. So, there's heroin addiction, which is physical. Then there's something like cocaine, which is more mental habitual. Well, I went through that one at the age of 25 and-

HEATHER (01:00:12):

Cocaine one.

HAKEEM (01:00:14):

Cocaine. Yeah. And I went to rehab and what they told me did not do anything for me. I did everything they said to do, but what I heard the other people talking, and I found my answer. And what it was was the drug would come to me in my dreams, it would talk to me and it would tell me how good it's going to be and all this. And I was hearing what everyone else was saying, and I put together a sentence that worked for me. And that sentence was, if I do it, I'm not going to get high. I'm going to get low.

HEATHER (01:00:45):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:00:46):

And that's the sentence I said to myself because it took five years for that voice to leave my head after I completely stopped. And that sentence was what I would say over and over every time it tried to lure me back in, right?

HEATHER (01:00:58):

Yes.

HAKEEM (01:00:58):

And so, if you do behavioral therapy, and there are people that are trying to achieve whatever mental goal they have, how do you get to their self-realization?

HEATHER (01:01:12):

So, especially with addiction, so what you did there, your technique was aversive conditioning. So, basically you associated in your mind, you made a new association instead of drug equals good and high, drug equals bad.

HAKEEM (01:01:26):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:01:27):

And it took you a while to make that become an implicit association, but you kept repeating it, repeating it, repeating it. Drug equals, I'm going to feel bad instead of drug equals, I'm going to feel good. And once you start pairing a stimulus with a punishment or something negative, then you unlearn, it changes your behavior. That's called aversive conditioning, right? So, with cigarettes, you say every time you're trying to quit, every time you take in an inhale, I want you to think about the cancer coming into your lungs and infecting your body with black, whatever. Give them some sort of image that every time you take a puff, that's what I want you to imagine every time. Then you start aversive conditioning. Or when a kid gets caught smoking, you say, "Now you got to smoke this whole pack. You can't stop until the end." They get sick. They never want to look at a cigarette again, right? You're connecting the stimulus with something bad. But the way to get to people with addiction is something called motivational interviewing.

(01:02:20):

So, there's a way of interviewing a person to get them to figure out what motivates them. And then you got to link that thing to something like, let's say you say to me, "My kids are the thing that means the most to me," whatever. And you start associating, "Well, if you do these drugs, you're going to lose your kids or you're going to..." And that's enough to motivate them. But external motivation does never work as good. Telling someone you got to study because you have to get a good grade on this exam is not going to motivate. They need to be internally motivated. You need to see what they care about and then link it to that. So, maybe my kid's like, "I want to study because I want to get into a good college, that's really important to me." Or, "I want to study because I want to get that new bike, and I know if I get this good grade, I'm going to get that new bike."

(01:03:03):

Whatever it is for that person, find out what motivates them, and then link the behavior to that and they will be more likely to stick to it.

HAKEEM (01:03:09):

So, you talked about too, there's the motivational side, there's the aversion side.

HEATHER (01:03:15):

Yes.

HAKEEM (01:03:16):

Is there one that works better than the other or do you... Because, let me... When I am a mentor, I find that there are some people that need a kick in the pants that need to be challenged, and there are others that need to be lifted up and encouraged, right? So, how do you find-

HEATHER (01:03:33):

Again, it's not one-size-fits-all. There's different theories in psychology about, "Oh, this kind of conditioning works better than the other." But really it depends. I think aversive conditioning is great because that's what's called one trial learning from an evolutionary perspective, it's adaptive. If you, have you ever noticed if you eat something, you get food poisoning.

HAKEEM (01:03:50):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:03:51):

You don't want to go near that ever again.

HAKEEM (01:03:52):

That's right.

HEATHER (01:03:52):

It takes one time, one time to learn. You don't want to go to that restaurant again you got food poisoning there, right?

HAKEEM (01:03:57):

Yeah. I did. It happened to me.

HEATHER (01:03:58):

Right.

HAKEEM (01:03:59):

When I moved here, I ate a Cobb salad with some raw chicken, got food poisoned. I haven't been back to that restaurant.

HEATHER (01:04:03):

You never again. Right.

HAKEEM (01:04:04):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:04:04):

And of course that makes sense. Adaptively, you're in the foraging, the forest, you find, you eat a berry, you get sick from that berry. You got to know, never eat that berry again. You're going to die. Right?

HAKEEM (01:04:13):

What'd you call that one something?

HEATHER (01:04:14):

One trial.. What did I call that?

HAKEEM (01:04:16):

Yeah, that was it. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:04:17):

Yeah. One trial learning, you learn it from one experience, and it's after that you'll never do it again. That's what aversive... How powerful an aversive experience can be to change your behavior. And sometimes it takes a little longer to get there through the reward pathway.

HAKEEM (01:04:36):

Ah, I see.

HEATHER (01:04:37):

So, there is debate in literature with children. What's the best way? Do you punish them or do you motivate them with incentives and rewards?

HAKEEM (01:04:46):

Right. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:04:46):

And it's kind of a combination of both. And you see some things work better than others. My son's really difficult because he doesn't... Punishments don't seem to affect him. If I say, "Go to your room." He's like, "Okay, fine." He goes to his room, he starts coloring. He makes the best of it. He's not bothered. He's like, "Sure, I'll go to my room, whatever." And then I'm like, "Damn, what do I have left in my toolkit?" The only thing I have left is the iPad. You can't have the iPad.

HAKEEM (01:05:10):

That's right. That's right.

HEATHER (01:05:10):

That's it. I'll tell you this one thing, like an anecdote. My grandmother who did a large amount of raising me, I was a teenager and I was going wild and misbehaving as one does, and I got caught one night. I had snuck out my house, I got caught. It was bad. And I was like, "Oh, God, I'm going to get real punished now."

HAKEEM (01:05:29):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:05:30):

And she comes in my room and she just said to me, it stuck with me to this day. And now I have a daughter who's 11 and starting to roll the eyes and stuff. She said, "I'm going to just say this one thing to you. I'm not even going to punish you." She said, "I am just going to say to you, I hope that one day you have a daughter who is exactly like you." And then she walked out and closed the door.

HAKEEM (01:05:50):

Oh, my God.

HEATHER (01:05:50):

I get chills to this day because I thought about that and I was like, "Oh, no, that's terrible. I don't want to be that." That made me start to change my behavior. That worked for me. But now I have a daughter and I'm like shit, "I hope my curse..."

HAKEEM (01:06:03):

The curse.

HEATHER (01:06:03):

"I hope my grandma... The hex, did she put a hex on me? Please don't let her be like me, please."

HAKEEM (01:06:09):

Well, my son turned out to be like me in some ways, and it really allowed me to forgive myself because I was like, "Oh, it ain't me. It's genetic."

HEATHER (01:06:20):

Right. "It's not me. I couldn't help it. My bloodline, there's nothing we could do."

HAKEEM (01:06:25):

Right.

HEATHER (01:06:26):

Yeah. But it's a scary thing. So, anyway, different things work on different people depending on their psychology. The same thing with learning and education. Some people want to really have their hand held throughout the educational process and have lots of testing, and they really need that. Other people want freedom, and they really thrive in that kind of environment. When I did my PhD, I was in the UK and at Oxford, they let you kind of do your own thing. Some people drowned in that because they really needed... They came from America. They were used to the structure and needed those benchmarks. I loved it.

HAKEEM (01:06:55):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:06:55):

But every brain is different.

HAKEEM (01:06:57):

Oh, man. I'll tell you. So, in my case, the last thing I want to do is what someone tells me to do.

HEATHER (01:07:05):

Right. Right, that's the thing. So, for a person like you, give you freedom and you're-

HAKEEM (01:07:09):

I'm an autodidact, right? Yeah. I'm self-driven.

HEATHER (01:07:12):

Same. Right.

HAKEEM (01:07:13):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:07:15):

But for some people who aren't... That model works for self-driven people, and I didn't like people telling me what to do, but some people, they aren't self-driven. They need to be told, "Look, you have this deadline, you to have this here." And that works.

HAKEEM (01:07:25):

And they thrive under that.

HEATHER (01:07:26):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:07:26):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:07:26):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:07:28):

So, fame and the brain. So, let me give you another, I know you have some thoughts on that. And so, let me just tell you my personal experience. So, I started doing science television about 13 years ago, and now people recognize me and it's completely changed the way I move through the world. It doesn't make me have a big head or anything like that. It gives me a comfort because I grew up in great violence, common violence, and I came of age and I turned 18 in 1985, the crack cocaine era, anytime you went out, somebody was mean mugging you. I was at gunpoint so many times because of the way I was living my life, various things like that. But I just have this, I was just going through the world on the defensive all the time, on edge, always looking. But now I expect that people are going to greet me in a positive way, which is kind of new, right? And what it's done is it's really just been a relief, right? It's just a, "Whew."

HEATHER (01:08:30):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:08:31):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:08:31):

You're not on the defense, you don't think you're being attacked.

HAKEEM (01:08:33):

Yeah. Yeah. So, it hasn't taken me from like, "Yeah, I'm the man now. I don't feel that at all." Right? I'm still just the same dude. But wow, I do feel such a sense of relief.

HEATHER (01:08:43):

Yeah, not a threat. There isn't a threat.

HAKEEM (01:08:44):

Not a threat, yeah. Everybody's not a threat anymore.

HEATHER (01:08:46):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:08:46):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:08:47):

I think... So, I've gotten really interested in how fame affects people, and it's not one size fits all. It's very different depending on the... So, I'm really interested in how different personalities intersect with this phenomena of fame.

HAKEEM (01:09:03):

And if I can interject.

HEATHER (01:09:05):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:09:05):

There's the phenomenon of children who become famous and how negative that can be in their lives. So, do you differentiate between adults and yeah, yeah-

HEATHER (01:09:12):

Yes. There's all different types of fame. There's childhood stardom that affects the developing brain. Suddenly you're having this really abnormal experience and all these sycophants you can have anything you want, and your brain isn't even fully developed. You don't even have impulse control, a lot of bad things... If you don't put things in place to help them, it can go really south. And we've seen a lot of cases of that. You have fame, you have infamy being famous for doing something. You get famous for just living your life and you do something amazing. And then you get famous. You have an athlete just trying to do their... Actors, politicians, there's different types of fame. There's falling out of fame, getting disgraced, getting canceled. I'm really interested in the psychology of this. Why do people chase it? Why do they want it? What's the evolutionary roots of it?

(01:09:55):

What we see from studies is that actually the person who has the best advantage is not the alpha, but it's the beta. It's the best friend of the famous person. Because everyone wants to knock the alpha person off their thing. They're constantly having to worry about, "Can I keep this?" And threats, and people want to knock them down. The guy just next to him, the best friend is getting all the benefits of more chances to procreate and getting more resources and getting all of that and getting all into VIP clubs, whatever. Because when you're Jay-Z's best friend, you're getting all the good stuff, but you're not getting all the people digging at you and trying to knock you down.

HAKEEM (01:10:30):

Yeah, your famous, but free.

HEATHER (01:10:32):

Right. Exactly. So, fame comes with a lot of perks, but it comes with downsides as well. But evolutionarily, now we're in this really weird world where anybody can sort of be famous, and everyone thinks they're this close to being famous, which it's illusory. It's not true. Internet fame isn't really what we meant by being famous. The sustainable, or for having done something amazing in the world like we're all going to know is the person who walked on the moon for the first time or-

HAKEEM (01:11:00):

Amelia Earhart.

HEATHER (01:11:01):

... Amelia Earhart or whatever. Right. They did things that, that's why they're well known, Einstein. But now it's like, I can create a meme and suddenly, but that doesn't last long and then you get the dopamine high and, "Oh, people like me." And then you're seeking it for more and more and more becomes like a drug. So, we see the same neurocircuitry involved in drugs of addiction are involved. It's involved in fame. It's another addiction.

HAKEEM (01:11:25):

What about formerly famous?

HEATHER (01:11:26):

Formerly famous? I mean, people who've been famous and fall out of fame.

HAKEEM (01:11:30):

Yeah.

HEATHER (01:11:30):

So, there's different types. Some continue the rest of their lives searching to try to get that high back again, right? It's like you got a cocaine high and now you're just keep trying to get back to that high. The successful people who navigate that find some other meaning and meaningfulness in life. They become an astrophysicist or they become... And they find other meaning. Other famous people find meaning in, now I'm going to do something positive with this platform or with this fame that I've gotten, and I'm going to turn it into something good for the world. And that becomes reinforcing for them. You get dopamine from helping others.

HAKEEM (01:12:06):

You bring up another point implicitly that seems to track to all sorts of positive benefits, like longevity being healthier, and that is living with purpose.

HEATHER (01:12:17):

Yes.

HAKEEM (01:12:18):

Right?

HEATHER (01:12:20):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:12:20):

And one of the sort of conflicts I have with the way we talk colloquially, we talk a lot about being happy, right? "Oh, if I'm happy..." And when I reflect on my own life, it hasn't so much been happiness, but fulfillment. And one example is when I was in the military, sometimes there would be some screw-up we've all participated in, so they're going to punish us. So, they're like, "We're getting up at 4:00 AM and we're going to run for six miles." And when we wake up at that ungodly hour and we're trying to fall out, and it's a chilly morning, we're all complaining.

HEATHER (01:13:01):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:13:01):

But at the end of it, we're all like, "This feels great." Because they just showed us what we were made of. They just extended us and pushed us, and we lived up to it. And I find in those situations where I'm just drugged and I persevere is some of the best feeling I have, but I wouldn't describe it as happy.

HEATHER (01:13:20):

Right. It's the same thing with let's say having children. Having children doesn't make you happier, right?

HAKEEM (01:13:28):

Right. Right.

HEATHER (01:13:31):

[inaudible 01:13:31]. That's the one thing that's come out of this. You can cut that one. She says, "You're not sleeping." I'm like their personal servant. You didn't make the pasta the right way. Make it again. You're driving them around, whatever. You're not increasing your level of happiness, but you are increasing your fulfillment. There's a joy you get from hardship and adversity because you're doing something that has meaning and purpose. Like, "I'm helping this human who's going grow into something in this world," and that becomes my purpose, and that has meaning for me. And every interaction I have with them is valuable. And so, yeah, happiness, it's-

HAKEEM (01:14:14):

So, what's happening in the brain when you have fulfillment and meaning and purpose, and why is that so beneficial?

HEATHER (01:14:20):

It's different than... So, there's highs you get in life from a amazing peak moment, which is great. And a lot of patients come in like, "I don't know, I don't feel happy." It's like, "It's not about happy, it's about, can you just..." It's like equanimity, first of all. That's first and foremost. Your baseline should just be, "I'm at peace."

HAKEEM (01:14:41):

Right. Hopefully.

HEATHER (01:14:41):

Not happy.

HAKEEM (01:14:41):

Hopefully.

HEATHER (01:14:42):

Yeah, right. No, most people aren't. And we're just trying to get to that.

HAKEEM (01:14:44):

Tell me about it. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:14:45):

It's not about, "Oh, I want to be happy." Those are peak moments. You can't always be happy. So, that's first and foremost. But our brains in some ways give us a reward or give us some certain types of pleasure from finding meaning in things. So, when you solve a puzzle, that's a good feeling.

HAKEEM (01:15:02):

Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:15:04):

And there's evolutionary reasons for why our brains evolved to find pleasure in solving problems. And I think finding meaning in ambiguous things and finding purpose, it gives us a sense of this pleasure, this contentment, which is different than the big dopamine highs and the rushes like a drug or fame.

HAKEEM (01:15:25):

So, what is it inside the brain? Is it turning things down?

HEATHER (01:15:31):

It's hard to say. It's not necessarily turning things down, but when I think people are fulfilled or feel at peace or have a sense of purpose, you do get some dopamine. You get the serotonin, which is the more long-term feeling of sort of a happiness or a contentment. But it is turning, if you want to say turning down the anxiety parts of... The rumination, the obsessing over all the negative things when you're like, "These negative things are happening in my life." It's really a sense of resilience, but I have purpose, I have meaning. It helps you build up this resilience. And we see that there's a genetic component actually to resilience.

HAKEEM (01:16:11):

Really?

HEATHER (01:16:12):

So, there are people like let's say who've been... They look at studies with PTSD, talk about being in the military. You go to war, they looked at soldiers who went to war, both experienced the same horrible things. A certain subset goes on to develop PTSD and the others don't. Is there something neuroprotective? And it turns out there is, there's certain genetic differences that help make people more resilient. People are studying this now, how do we increase resiliency? But the point is that when you have a purpose or a meaning in addition, let's say there's some genetic components, but it can help inoculate you against all these negative things that inevitably happen in life. People die, you lose a job, whatever. That all happens to everybody.

HAKEEM (01:16:50):

Right.

HEATHER (01:16:51):

Some people overcome it because I have a greater sense of purpose. Some people find that in religion, some people find that I have a higher purpose. When people go to AA, they always say, find a higher-

HAKEEM (01:17:00):

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:17:01):

But it's something greater than oneself. It's like that kind of feeling. It's not just about me and my little petty problems, whatever. It's something greater.

HAKEEM (01:17:09):

Something bigger. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:17:10):

I have a purpose. And I think when you link yourself to something bigger, and that's what I talk about as a cure to kind of fame. It's not about me, me, me, I need all the adulation and the likes and whatever. It's what's your greater purpose outside of you, outside of yourself?

HAKEEM (01:17:24):

So, what do you think is coming down the pipeline as we study consciousness, as we study the brain, what are the frontiers right now and what are going to be the next breakthroughs that are going to occur? And let me just add a little bit. I've become aware of computer brain interfaces and all that kind of stuff, so be as broad as possible.

HEATHER (01:17:47):

Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what I was thinking of, and is this idea of us merging with technology in a way of having neural implants and neuroprosthetics and implanting devices that we merge with AI. And that might be the next step of human evolution, is that we become cyborgs.

HAKEEM (01:18:09):

Oh, that sounds cool.

HEATHER (01:18:12):

Well, look, it's happening anyway. These technologies are being developed to help, right now, it's to help people who have disabilities or it's for mental health issues or neurological issues, Parkinson's, these kinds of things. It's helping people, people who are paralyzed, and now they can put these implants in that translate your thought about moving a limb to a computer that then controls a prosthetic limb that will move it with your thoughts. So, you think, "I'm going to pick up this cup of coffee," and you can do this with the neural implant. So, it's helping people who are disadvantaged. However, it is of course going to move into this world of cognitive enhancement where people are like, "Well, what if I have a neural implant that can make me smarter or pay more attention or help modulate my emotions in a certain way, or control my desire to want to eat this fatty thing," or whatever. We're going to start... As we've done with other technologies, is like you were saying before of mental engineering.

HAKEEM (01:19:15):

Right.

HEATHER (01:19:16):

We're going to human engineer our brain, and people are already starting to do this. I think ultimately, either it's going to be performance enhancing drugs will have to be completely outlawed that no one can have it because it will give people such an advantage. There'll be the haves and the have nots. So, either everybody has to have it or nobody, or it's going to be amazing power.

HAKEEM (01:19:41):

Once the cat is out the bag, those with resources are going to-

HEATHER (01:19:41):

Of course, and it's all the tech and the Silicon Valley people are going to start having this. So, I think we will start merging with technology in this way. Things will get smaller and smaller and smaller. Soon you just implant a chip, that's your iPhone. Now you just say, "Call mom." And it calls it in your head. You're having conversations in your head, who knows? But then the question is going to be, and this is what I gave a recent TED talk about, was what does it mean to be human then?

HAKEEM (01:20:02):

Right.

HEATHER (01:20:03):

What does it mean to be human in this world of evolving technology and AI and as we're merging with it? And this classic silicon chip thought experiment is like if you replace one neuron with the silicon chip, are you still you? Are you still conscious? Then another, then another, another. At what point are you still human? What point are you still conscious? What does it mean to be human? And I think right now, our last... AI, artificial intelligence, maybe you call it advanced intelligence or enhanced intelligence, it's already smarter than us in many ways. It can do things way quicker than us.

HAKEEM (01:20:34):

Right. Absolutely.

HEATHER (01:20:34):

It has access to all the information, all the books. And so, what's left for us, I think is consciousness, at least for now. And that allows, I think AI will be able to format the stuff we don't want to do like answer emails and bureaucracy and all this stuff. Let them do it, save us time, and allow us to be more human, to get back to our evolutionary roots, because we're still cavemen brains in a modern world. We want to just hang out with each other, listen to music, procreate, eat. So, go on vacation, go to the beach.

HAKEEM (01:21:05):

That's right.

HEATHER (01:21:05):

So we can have more time being human, being creative, doing what we want to do.

HAKEEM (01:21:10):

Sounds like the world of Star Trek.

HEATHER (01:21:14):

Yes. Right. Yes.

HAKEEM (01:21:14):

We've eliminated greed and all the need for that kind of stuff.

HEATHER (01:21:19):

But I think that's the future. I think we're going to merge with technology, and I think at least right now in psychiatry, a lot of the psychedelic psychotherapies are on the cutting edge. But this really thinking further in the future is merging with technology. And I'm hoping for a utopia, it could be dystopic at this meeting.

HAKEEM (01:21:37):

What about brain health?

HEATHER (01:21:38):

Brain health in terms-

HAKEEM (01:21:39):

Yeah. Yeah. Like there are people-

HEATHER (01:21:41):

Like longevity or?

HAKEEM (01:21:42):

Well, no, like we were talking about the therapy because people have schizophrenia and various brain conditions.

HEATHER (01:21:52):

I think ultimately with that and things like Alzheimer's and whatnot, I mean, our rate-limiting thing is our understanding of the development of these diseases. But once we have that understanding, which I think AI is helping with scientists now to understand these things, ultimately, I think we're going to go back to CRISPR, which is modifying the genome so that these diseases never develop because now we're catching them already when it's too late. Once you have, let's say, the visible clinical Alzheimer's symptoms, you're already so far down in the disease process, it's very difficult to reverse that. All you can do is try to slow it down. But if we can start with the genome, ultimately, and there's a whole bunch of ethical issues around this, and there's people who argue with autism like, "I don't want you taking away this. This autism is something... It's a gift."

HAKEEM (01:22:40):

That's right.

HEATHER (01:22:41):

So, it becomes these arguments that... But ultimately I think it's going to come down to modifying the genome to get rid of some of these disorders.

HAKEEM (01:22:49):

What about... Could you imagine militaries getting rid of fear in soldiers for example?

HEATHER (01:22:56):

Oh, yeah.

HAKEEM (01:22:56):

Oh, yeah.

HEATHER (01:22:56):

Oh, yes. Definitely. Yeah, that's for sure. Not saying I'm doing any work with the DOD, but-

HAKEEM (01:23:02):

Oh, no.

HEATHER (01:23:08):

Yes, yes, for sure. I mean, we know from neuroscience, we have a pretty clear understanding of the fear network in the brain. And for sure we can do things like short circuit that fear network and get people to be not afraid.

HAKEEM (01:23:19):

Wow. So, if you look at what's next in terms of our understanding of the brain, you think AI is going to be a big part of getting us there?

HEATHER (01:23:26):

Yes, absolutely. And talking to some of the leaders in AI, the head of Anthropic and other places who is a computational neuroscientist by training. We were talking and he knew my mentor and whatever. He was saying, he started this, got into AI because the brain was so difficult to understand. You needed new ways in which, like the computational power and things to understand it. But I think with what I'm seeing, with what's happening with AI is just giving us greater power to be able to understand the complexity of the human brain. And I do think that there's some hope there that we'll have a greater understanding. Now what we do with that understanding and that information is another-

HAKEEM (01:24:06):

TBD.

HEATHER (01:24:07):

Yes. It's like with great power, comes great responsibility.

HAKEEM (01:24:11):

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:24:11):

So, it's about the decisions we make, like nuclear power could be really great or it could really suck. So, I'm trying to remain optimistic and hopeful, but I do think AI is going to be a huge component, what transforms our understanding of the brain.

HAKEEM (01:24:25):

Yeah. What I tend to see is that when we make these creations that have built within them the capacity for great, good and great bad, you end up getting both, but you want to control those bad and reap the good.

HEATHER (01:24:39):

Do you know what it really, I think it comes down to? It's Freud because we are humans. These sort of ape-like creatures roaming around with all these basic instincts. And Freud talked about, and not everything Freud said was... He was out there in a lot of things, but certain things he got right. And that we have this either this death instinct, this instinct to kind of... It's our dark side toward killing ourselves basically.

HAKEEM (01:25:05):

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

HEATHER (01:25:05):

Or this other instinct, which is the life instinct and libido. And it really depends on human instincts and where we're going to go with that. I think ultimately we're going to develop these technologies because we have the cognitive capacity to do so, and it's going to lead us in all these different directions. But do we have the dark death instinct or is that instinct for life and survival going to overcome? And that we don't know.

HAKEEM (01:25:33):

I tend to be a half glass full guy. I think that our species has already been through so much and we tend to catastrophize the modern time, and we tend to think about us all dying at once the end of the world, even though we know we're all going to go individually, why be concerned about we all go at once? So, I think that I have faith in humanity that we might have our ups and downs, but the arc of knowledge tends toward increase.

HEATHER (01:26:03):

Right. And there's this book that's saying basically the moral arc... Like we are getting better in terms of our life, quality of life and all of that. There's less murder than there was in...

HAKEEM (01:26:15):

That's right.

HEATHER (01:26:16):

By all these metrics, we are getting better. Ultimately, I guess at some point the universe is going to burn out-

HAKEEM (01:26:23):

Heat death. Yeah. 10^68, 10^100 years.

HEATHER (01:26:27):

But this is my only complaint is that if we don't go back into the stream of consciousness or I'm not alive for infinity, according to... What was that thing? The infinity, like we're alive constantly... Oh, there is.

HAKEEM (01:26:39):

Oh, yeah, eternalism?

HEATHER (01:26:42):

Yes, eternalism. I just want to know how the story ends. I get this glimpse of everything that happened before, or at least that we know of from history and what's happening in my lifetime. But how does the story end?

HAKEEM (01:26:53):

You want to get my next book?

HEATHER (01:26:54):

Oh, okay. Does it tell me the answer?

HAKEEM (01:26:56):

Yeah. The title of the book is Why Do We Exist, the Nine Realms of the Universe That Make You Possible. One of those realms is the temporal realm, and I go up through the past using a set of principles, framed it in a physics context, in a non-standard way, and then I go through the future and I paint the picture of what's to come based on all our current knowledge.

HEATHER (01:27:22):

I like this.

HAKEEM (01:27:23):

It is different. I think it's a different take. I think that I'm giving it in a different way. It can get kind of lonely.

HEATHER (01:27:30):

Okay.

HAKEEM (01:27:31):

But only at the galactic scale, right? On the individual scale.

HEATHER (01:27:34):

Oh, okay. That makes me feel better.

HAKEEM (01:27:35):

Given our ingenuity, we're going to be able to last much longer, I think, even than our sun, even in the planet. We can last longer than planet Earth can.

HEATHER (01:27:44):

Okay. I like this.

HAKEEM (01:27:45):

Yeah. But we're going to be different. Like you said, what does it mean to be a human? If we did no integration with technology, a million years from now, we'd be probably as different as we are from a million years ago, right?

HEATHER (01:27:57):

Yeah. I think we have to integrate with technology in order to survive.

HAKEEM (01:28:01):

Well, I already have, I have a titanium screw in my shoulder, so.

HEATHER (01:28:10):

Oh, there you go. I don't have such thing, but I will. If it'll make you live longer-

HAKEEM (01:28:10):

You're going to have it in your brain.

HEATHER (01:28:10):

Yeah. I'll do whatever.

HAKEEM (01:28:11):

Ms. Heather, Dr. Heather.

HEATHER (01:28:12):

Yes.

HAKEEM (01:28:13):

You have been amazing. Thank you so much.

HEATHER (01:28:15):

Thank you so much.

HAKEEM (01:28:15):

I've learned so much from you.

HEATHER (01:28:16):

Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:28:17):

I expect to receive a diploma now that you've educated me, do I get a degree in neuroscience?

HEATHER (01:28:23):

Yeah, we can talk about it. Yeah.

HAKEEM (01:28:26):

Appreciate you coming. This was excellent. Thank you so much.

HEATHER (01:28:29):

Thank you for having me.