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cover of episode LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman at Meridian Hall in Toronto

LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman at Meridian Hall in Toronto

2023/11/15
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Andrew Huberman
是一位专注于神经科学、学习和健康的斯坦福大学教授和播客主持人。
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与Paul Conti合作的系列节目旨在帮助人们提升心理健康,提供免费的工具和实践方法,特别是关注潜意识对个人行为和情绪的影响。Huberman强调了自我关照的重要性,认为这有助于提升情绪韧性,并预防在触发情境中的负面反应。他认为,在日常生活中注重自我关照,例如充足的睡眠、规律的运动和冥想练习,比在触发情境中试图应对更为重要。

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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. Recently, the huberman lab hosted a alive event at the medium theater in toronto, ontario. The event consisted of lecture entitled the brain body contract, followed by question and answer session.

We wanted to make sure that the question and answer session was available to everybody, regardless of who could attend in person. I also want to make sure to thank the sponsors of the that event, which were ag one in eight sleep. Eight sleep make smart matches covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity.

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IT has a number of other features, like tracking the amount of rapid I move in and slow wave sleep that you get, things that are essential to really darling in the perfect night sleep for you. I've been slept on in eight sleep matters cover for well over two years now, and IT has greatly improved my sleep. I fall asleep far more quickly.

I wake up far less often in the middle night when I wake up feeling far more refresh ed than I ever did. Priority using night sleep mattress cover. If you like to try a sleep, you can go to a sleep dotcom slash huberman to save one hundred and fifty dollars off their pot.

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The reason I started taking A G one and the reason I still drink A G one once or twice a day, is that IT provides all of my foundational nutritional needs. That is, IT provides insurance that I get the proper amounts of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics and fiber to ensure optimal mental health, physical health and performance. If you'd like to try ag one, you can go to drink A G one dock com slash huberman to claim a special offer. They're giving away five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin d 3k two again, that drink A G one dot com slash huberman to claim that special offer. And now without further to do the question and answer session from our live event at the morden theatre in toronto, ontario.

Okay um what motivated me to do the gestures with paul county? okay. So first all for those of you that don't know, paul ty, a psychiatrist, is a stanford and harvard trained psychiatrist um and I wanted to do the series with paul l for several reasons um and we initiate that series first of all um he's incredibly talented IT as a clinical and yet despite having written an excEllent book about trauma, I felt that two things were true for sure one is that most people won't get the opportunity to work with paul, sadly, is this time limited.

And second, that his expertise is incredibly vast, not just restricted to trauma. Traumas, if understood, can be transmitted into, you know, deep sources of knowledge that other people can benefit from an indeed, what I found in paul, as I got to know him, is that he has just profound in sight, into the unconscious mind. And people had long asked me in around the podcast, what about the subconscious? What about the unconscious? And I was of the mind that the supercomputer of the human brain is the four brain, the thinking, planning, context setting, peace right by winter forehead.

So you, the reason that we're not the house cats, the house cats of the house cats, and reason where the curators of the planet, the polls set or no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The unconscious mind is the supercomputer of the mind. Like what that sounds great, but how do we understand the unconscious mind? And he has a really biological and psychological and psychiatric understanding of the unconscious.

And in that series, he talks about these so called covers that we can look into in order to Better understand our unconscious, unconscious mind, in order to allow unconscious mind to teach us things about ourselves that are useful. And there are three main places where our unconscious teaches us useful things that allow us to be more conscious of the way that our brain is working in useful ways. The first is in these liminal states between waking and sleep.

IT really does seem to be the case that when surprise prize we're completely still and we're emerging from or we're dropping into states of reduced automation ic isle. But our level of thought, if you will, is still active enough that we are aware, maybe even lose their dreams. And also in dreams are unconscious mind uses, as I think, Young and for IT pretty well understood symbols to teach us things.

But everything's flipped in. Their gender flipped like the like just because you're having a conflict with somebody in your life who's a man doesn't mean that that person shows up as a man. They could show as an animals.

So species are flipped. The symbols become missioned ashes. But paul made IT very clear that all this can be passed if you do a certain kind of intractable tive work.

And I thought that would mean a lot of talk therapy that people would, how are you going to get people to learn how to do talk therapy by themselves? We want to keep things as much, you know, independent of cost and things like that. And the practices he started talking about, we're incredibly simple things, is like mirror work.

Some of the psychologist s in the room will be familiar with, I thought, mirror work. What is that? He said, literally, people trying to activate their unconscious, or, excuse me, access their own conscious in sleep by a practice of staring into the mirror for some period of time while awake, and reflecting on self and aspirations and the idea of the body as a container. All this stuff, even for a kid from northern california and really new ag. But here it's scripted by paul into a formal structure that one can use to pass your own mental health and enhanced mental health.

So that was the reason for for doing the series, and especially that the episode on relationships, not just romantic relationships, I found hasn't come out yet incredibly interesting because he talked about how, in his clinical experience, all virtually all the stuff that people pay attention to in relational stuff is are they on arcesius? Are they, uh, obsessive? Is this person a musician? Whether or not I an accounting are we compatible that none of that stuff predicts anything as well as the baLance of these three drives the aggressive drive, the pleasure drive and the so called generative drive.

And I found IT to be vcs ating, and i'm excited for that of so the other episodes to come out but basic because paul brilliant and he makes the of what I considered pretty obscure and uh OPEC very clear and concrete and their a bunch of work sheet, again, all available as zero costs and none of them requiring that you do therapy with anybody, if that if you choose not to. This is all the kind of work the one could do on oneself. And the last thing i'll say about this is, and I should have said this first, is that the primary motivation was we did a series of doctor and I galpin on physical fitness.

Why isn't there a series on mental fitness, right? Like what is that? Why do we talk so much about mental health when we're and it's usually a conversation about mental illness, what people should have, tools and practices that are zero cost, I believe, to be able to introspect in a structured way and enhance their mental health, the independent of in their level of income.

And I think paul was the guy to do IT. It'll do more of that with other people as well because no single episode about any topic or series can exhaustively cover any topic of the lor knows we will try okay. Next question, what are the recommended protocols, best practices to enhance emotional resilience and developed effective responses during highly trigger ing situation? You asking the wrong guy.

Well, I mean, I don't snap, I don't snap. I was a wild teenager, but I don't snap. I'm not the aggressor, but I do have a button and it's been pushed before.

And I have to say when that happens, it's really kind of a scary thing not to meet, right? And has been many years. But I think anyone who's who was hit that threshold where you just you try not to say something, you say that anyway.

You know that's usually how IT shows up for people. Um I think we hear the statements like be responsive, not reactive. That's why I became a biologist because stuff like that makes no sense to me.

But in that moment, how are you responsive, not reactive? So to me I was like, what are the tools? Clearly, as you go up that continuum of auto onic, isle IT becomes much harder to do whatever that means, right? So that hence that the tools for reducing stress in real time, I think the one that we have to emphasize so much on the podcast, and by the way, thanks to some great therapy that was not voluntary, I was able to I was a wild kid.

A wild, wild kid hung around wild kids and things we're pretty different than and we we worked IT out, you know. But I think nowadays it's wonderful because I think people are more conscious of um the need to understand their nervous system, their own psychology that wasn't as common back then. Um in fact, I I hit the fact that I had the new therapy y for a long time thinking like you won't you think i'm crazy? They did call me crazy.

You know I think things have really changed. I think the last twenty years, i've brought about a profound shift in the way that we think about our own species and what what are useful tools and practices. And I think that one of the things that is abundantly clear is that that threshold for a stress response really is different for different people, different in different situations.

But that IT is something that can be practiced and elevated and IT in terms of not getting near that trigger point through the types of practices I talked about earlier, getting more comfortable with a general and circulating in your system is what it's really about, Frankly. But of course, IT all starts with a good night sleep, where I is going to make you far less reactive. But of course, when you're stressed that often when you're not getting good sleep.

So I think that ultimately, the our ability to as you more emotional resilience ts and effective responses during trigger ing situations is really the consequence of practices of taking good care side of those situations. And then of course, inevitably there will be situations where people get triggered. And it's actually interesting to see the way that people behave online and the fact that you many people, in fact, in science as well, have literally lost their jobs for having not being able to control their it's time where in an odd time where there's the distancing of doing things online as supposed to in person, where people somehow engage in saying things, in doing things that they wound in person.

But I think that ultimately it's the consequences. Gods, self care. And this gets actually back to some of the things that are covered in the county series. You know, we hear about self care as we think that means massages, which are great, by the way, and we think that that is about exercise, and that's wonderful.

But much of self care is about really making sure that our ervine system is in the state that we need IT to be in in order to go about our day. And I think this is why morning routines and practices are so vital. I think that those set the stage for the emotional resilience, those set the stage for avoiding getting trigger, so to speak.

I don't think there's a lot that one can do in real time except perhaps physiological size. So sorry to give you a sort of empty answer. I'm not a peston ist on this front, but it's I think that ultimately, it's like saying, well, what if you have to scale the side of a building to get any locked yourself out? What can you do to prepare for that? What you can buy a later.

But if you don't have a latter, you know, because what you probably should do is be physically fit enough to, you know, climb up a ring or something like that, know how to pick a lock or something like that. So I think ultimately it's the consequence of stuff that's done away from those trigger ing situations. Next question, please.

How would you describe the brain activity of somebody when they're suddenly inspired and having Foster inspiration in your life? Well, I talk a little bit about this, but I I will say that the best way to Foster inspiration, in the words of the great joe stammer, they actually call IT stammers law. No joke, no input, no output.

I think one of the things that i've observed over and over again is that as much as we need to dedicate ourselves to our craft, to our families, to our friends, that ultimately our best ideas come from desperate experiences when we're not seeking a particular kind of input to get ideas. Now maybe this practice of being completely still, while being alert, Fosters a lot of, I think, the way understand is more of a guider ing up of of stored information in the unconscious. So I think rick would talk about IT, or paul county would talk about IT as guides ing up from the unconscious.

Because when we are focused on the outside world, we're taking in sensory information or exterior tion as posted in terrell tion. And of course, that external sensor information that no input, no output is that those are the raw materials that are nervous system uses to construct ideas about anything. So my belief, and this is a practice I do every week, as I make sure that at least once a week, I either walk or hike or run without any earphones.

And i'm trying to get in the states and wordlessly ss states, where i'm not digesting a podcast, where i'm not reading a book, where i'm not listening to lecture, where i'm not in conversation, and essentially trying to turn off that the linguistic narrative, we are a story telling species. We tend to take all all of our internal and external experience and construct things around language. But languages is not spoken.

Language is not the language of the nervous system. The language of the nervous system still remains to be identified. It's something else for people that think and feels IT will certainly incorporate that.

Spoken language, of course, is important. And we have some core structures to spoken language. Recover this in the podcast episode with my friend ei chain.

But ultimately, the the way to come up with new ideas, inspiration, is going to be to collect the raw materials of experience and then give ourselves these periods, maybe even just five, ten minutes on to lay around half the day doing nothing, still quite awake and give that those raw materials the opportunity to to marinate and combine in whatever ways that are unique to you and then to guys up um what inspiration looks like in the brain. We don't really know. Um there's all there are some studies about all, but that's different.

I the word that Better comes to mind is the light ten in my mind is something that we witness that our overwhelms our attention like delight is when IT somehow links up with our own internal narrative, like I have something to do with what's happening. I'm not just here to IT your firework show. Really impressive firework show is like, oh, but there's nothing to do about IT.

IT doesn't relate to anything about you really. You're purely a spectator. Whether delight is when you see something and that somehow links to something in your emotional or personal history or how you're wired that now there's something to do about IT, that's inspiration.

And we don't understand where that exists in the brain or what that looks like. But I think we all recognized that feeling when that happens, and it's also wonderful. okay.

Next question, please. How can canadians fight the seasonal depression of winters are too long here. Okay, okay. well. Well, this gives me an opportunity to share with you what I think is one of the coolest things about our species. Now as I say that about many things.

Um so we've talked about circuit an rythm right sunrise sunset and we get that information transmitted in our nervous system by looking at the sun rise. By the way, you don't have to watch the sun cross the horizon IT just needs to be low solar angle, low in the sky once it's overhead, a different signal. So low solar angle, that's what it's about.

It's not necessarily about seeing the sun across the horizon. By the way, someone the other day and my team said, we won't you get cat acts. If you look at the sun, low solar angle, sunlight is very unlikely to cause cattle, especially you destroying attend to thirty minutes that solar, you know, the sun overhead is one is quite right.

Yes, indeed, some people are going to be at risk. cataract. So of thyme logic in the audience can attack me for that one. But he was our chair of authentic logic at stanford. That said that someone to trust him, okay, that circadian and twenty four hour rythm, but there's also these sergente, al rythm.

So if you had a fairly northern location on the planet, night scape, long days get short in winter, what happens then? Well, melatonin, the hormone of darkness, right, is essentially obliterated by light, by sunlight. So what's happening when days are you? Twelve hours long, you have very little militant on in the duration of the military, and signing is very short.

Then as you proceed into the fall, days are getting short, nights getting longer. The duration of the milton and signal is getting longer and longer. Then this course in winter is a lot more darkness.

Militant tony, signals are very long. Daylight signals are very short because the days are short. So I, okay, well, that's obvious goodness. But what that means is incredible.

What that means is that you have a hormone, militaria, that's secreted from your piano gland, which descarte called the seat of the soul, because only one of them in the brain, he came up with that one. But the piano secrets, militant ona, and and you suppress military insecurity with sunlight viewing. There's a couple of synapses in between the eyes and the pinion, but IT gets there up through the neck basis.

Is server ical gaining? What's wild, therefore, is that the location of the earth around the sun and the tilt of the earth is translated into a neural and then a hormonal signal in your brain, which to me is amazing. That literally means that the position of the earth around the sun and its tilt are translated into a physiological signal that's working unconsciously to tell you brain and body what time of year IT is.

But IT doesn't care what time of year IT is. IT cares about where you are in this orbit about the sun. So if you think about when days are, say, eight hours long in the fall versus eight hours long in the spring, what's different? What's different is how long the signal was the day before.

So the seasonal depression, we now know, is the consequence of the military and signal getting longer, not an absolute ation of the milestones signal. In other words, in the spring when the day is eight hours long, but yesterday the day was seven hours and forty eight minutes long, your brain has a memory of how much military onan was released the day before, much more than that particular day. So it's a slow integrating clock.

So this is a very round about way for me to teach you about the military onan seasonal rym cycle and answer the question directly by saying if you want to offset seasonal depression, what you want to do is extend the amount of bright light that you're getting in the morning slightly as days get shorter, but it's the extension of the bright light exposure. And if you can't do that with sunlight and or sunlight, because you live in toronto, not toronto, what you want to do is playing some artificial source that you can look at in the morning before you leave your home. And I haven't talked much about this on the podcast because our listeners are extended around the global and not just in northern locations.

But what this essentially means is getting maybe two to three minutes of bright light exposure as you're heading from fall into a winter, bright light from an artificial source. You do not need to purchase a so called side. And one of these very expensive seasonal effect, depression lamps, you can.

What I did was I purchased because i'm very sensitive to seasonal changes in light, even though I don't live very far north. As you can get eight, nine hundred lucks drawing tablet, these are quite inexpensive. They are not zero cost, but quite inexpensive.

And just put that on your desk or on your wherever you make your coffee in the morning, ninety minutes after you wake up this sort thing, and just get five or so minutes before you leave the house. And then as you extend into the winter, you don't have to be neurotic about increasing the duration every day. You could actually the way these these slow integrating clocks work, you could actually even just hold IT a little bit closer each day.

Don't burn your ebs out a little little closer each table. Essentially, if you just dose yourself with a little bit more bright light early in the day as you extend into winter, that will essentially trick the the military and system into thinking that you're going from eight hours into ten hours of light as opposed to eight hours into six hours of light. Okay, very simple.

And if you can't get one of these nine hundred looks tablets or something of a website, then you could do this with any bright, inconsistent bulb. Should work again. Just be careful not to put IT directly against her eyeball.

Next question, please, how to increase the new place to see? Well, this this is an opportunity to talk about something I should have said earlier, which is that ultimately whether or not you are trigger ing neural plasticity through elevated focus or whether not you're taking hyo solicitation and your business, not mine um and we can talk about psychiatrically if you want. Just decriminalized in california, soon to be decriminalized.

Cool people who are enthusiastic. Yeah the one thing i've i've been pretty vocal about my belief that the data are really interesting, to say the least, about not microdot. By the way, there there is not a lot of evidence that microdot in is useful. I'm not saying it's not, but they're a lot of clinical trials.

So showing that but the two macrovoice with with effective theraputics support um trials are very encouraging, not just for major depression but also for vary eating disorder as alcohol use disorder which is by the way, that the terminal that people are starting to shift to as supposed to alcohol atis m more alcohol is is alcohol use disorder which is not to be politically crazy ing. So we understand what they're talking about when they're talking about college disorder, whether not Sullivan, whether not a md ma, whether not its frustration about by your inability to play an instrument and your determination to do so. It's in the end it's all about deploying yet of these neuro dulas ors, their modulators being some combination of dopamine cetonia, a seat of calling or up in different, again, usually in combination.

What's very clear that the neuroplasticity effects of the dma, the neural plastic effects of so sivin, are brought about by huge increases in serotonin. This is also can help us understand why, for some years, and to some extent still now, IT was thought that the sss, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, would be good treatments for depression. I think some people, by the way, have experienced tremendous relief from the accessorize.

We don't want to demonize them. At the same time, it's very clear that depression is not simply low levels of serotonin. That's also not true. Hence why there's effective in some people into the presence like preparing that increase dopamine, an an an american and and not serotonin.

The point here is that these neuromodulators, as they're called, allow for what they allow for modulation of synapse sis, which effectively allows for neuroplasticity and ultimately be whether I was through talk therapy, y condole, I breathing, you know, hyo silicide in md, ma, or in the combination, which I think is called a happy flip, never done him together. I can best never done him together. But have done them in with the clinic, by the way, in legal circumstances and not a lot not not often that is um it's very clear that it's opening windows for plastic to see.

Now it's intriguing if you're going to just talk about psychiatric s for a second, is why a drug like m dma, which increases dopy, which by the way, m dma is dioxys math and federman don't want anybody tell you it's something there. It's math, it's math, but it's math with a lot of serotonin throne in there too. But it's math and it's clear that for the treatment of ptsd, IT holds promise.

It's not absolutely safe, especially with people cardiac conditions. And you if you're going to go down that path, you want to need a skilled guide. And this is where I think the laws are really going to have to pay careful attention to what who and what is a skilled to guide.

okay. And when IT comes to so siven, the serotonin increase is what eventually causes this broader connectivity in the brain. And what's interesting is that both of those drugs increased plastically mainly through increases in serotonin, but working on very different receptors, say, different hypes and outputs of plastics.

What is interesting to me is that because i'm a strong believer that children should not be doing psychiatric, nor should we will be giving children psychology, is that the the increases in connectivity in the brain that are the consequence of playing a musical instrument, or ideally, and instrument with others as a child, mimic a lot of the broader scale connectivity, so called the resting network connectivity, that occurs when people take psychedelic sense. Adult, in other words, and I can't ever size this enough. And again, I failed that music miserably.

I'll tell you a story about that a second. But so getting kids to plan an instrument is is very clear, improves their ability to learn all sorts of things for their entire life. It's just so, so important.

I don't really know what to do about this or who to shout out or talk to about keeping the arts active and in schools as and physical education. But the idea that we were just train kids in math is just frightening because if you want them to be truly good at math and science, you'd also have them play instruments. By the way, when I was a kid, I played the violin my parents made me was not the instrumental.

Our plane, we have only one picture, and they taught me this suzuki method was to learn ear. And there's one picture, and all the other kids have their bows up. And my boat is down, and i'm standing here on the stage, and my fly is deal.

And I and and literally, the neighbor's dog held, and I quit after that concert. So I was traumatized, but they show me the picture my sister teach me relentless ly, so neuroplasticity figure out your choice way to increase a Normal argillite, or like serotonin, a eban afra sea of calling or dopamine. I honestly would not encourage pharma logic or psychiatric approaches as your primary entry point.

I really doubt, I think, that there is a place for that in certain circumstances, but that would not be the primary entry point. Next question, please, what type of movement protocols you recommend for somebody is working from home sitting hunting computer from A M to five P M, or okay, well, couple things. I mean, I can make all sorts of recommendations.

Get up early and you move and if you can take breaks and walk this sort of thing. But let's just assume that all of that is is kind of an understood that there are certain forms of exercises that we shall be doing. three.

I think now it's very clear based on the beautiful work, Peter tea, whose brothers in the audience, by the way, tonight, yeah, yeah, he's got a Younger brother. He's got a Younger brother. He image Peter a tear.

Was your older brother, imagine, be pretty cool. The I sort of adopt people as siddon they don't know IT. But I do if, but I just assume Peter was my older brother returns out. He has a Young ger brother already, and Peter is essentially hammed home. The truth, which is that we should all be getting somewhere, we doing one hundred and fifty and two hundred minutes of so called zone to cardio where we're walking a lot and we're moving about where we can just barely hold a conversation, I know as people and to seem to walk a lot. So that's great.

And then three days a week or so, resistance training and their bunch of other mobility things that we shall do so that we don't fall in brick, because that's were another bone, because that's another way that people really limit their health spin and life spin and so on and so forth. But two things that can make being at a desk, which I love, even though I like to learn, I hate sitting still, you can do the standing best thing. I do that by stacking boxes.

The other thing that was interesting, did anyone see this study out of the university of texas? Think I was in houston this last year about the solid push up. Did they anyone see this? This is pretty interesting.

So the solid is, you know, wider, flat muscle below the gas struck me to the cafe is a really unique muscle in the human body is one percent of the total human musculature. But IT has an ability what will sue me for obvious reasons, to um dramatically shift fuel utilization in the body. What they did in the study was they had people who were sitting for, you know, three or four hours a day just simply raised heel.

Seems almost silly, right? They called a solid push up. When I call that that online, I literally got attacked by the gym brows, telling me that ceded cafe rays.

Okay, you know, I oh okay. No wonder that you know, this whole rose signed thing get, you know, people get really aggressive. They lift their heel and they they are pushing their toe down. And some people think of IT is bouncing the knee, but it's really about pushing the top and lifting the heel.

So they just simply at these sedateness, this heel race, and what they saw was that there was a dramatic highest statistically significant increase in blood glue cos utilization and reduction in both in lin levels during that activity and around the clock. Really interesting. What they were doing was mimicking some aspect of walking.

Now is IT as good as walking? no. But if you are stuck behind the, you know, working from home, sitting behind the computer from ATM to five pm, getting what they found was that people getting into this unconscious pattern of lifting their heel over and over and shifting back and forth, myself ics a lot of the effects of walking.

It's not placement for exercise, but the shifts in glue cos and insulin output and utilization, excuse me, utilization, ation and output respectively, uh, were were very impressive. And this group down the university of his universe of texas and and is starting to incorporate this into people who have limited mobility. And IT doesn't seem like other little movements can do this.

There's something special about the solid IT was designed in other quotes to be a muscle that used repeatedly over extended hours of time and that has a unique pathway of fuel utilization ation. So is that going to cure obesity? no.

But if you're still behind a does that would be something using I this little figure thing, I was too lazy to build one, but I I found one online for a couple box where you just when you stand at your desk and just kind of kick IT back and forth, I want to seen these cool, then you just can't kick them back and forth. And some people will treat mild the does, I can do that. I can do that many things, but I also still like working on this one.

I can paint quite do that. Next question of please. My morning meditation consist up, okay, and then I think we're about out of time.

But the yes. So my morning a meditation is not really a meditation, is the perceptual exercise. And that perceptual exercise is has a weird name, because I gave a weird name and I didn't intend to sound mystical.

And I don't want credit for IT, but I call IT space time bridging. But it's not that what IT really is is that, to me, one of the most interesting things about the nervous system is our ability to orient in different time domains. This gets a little bit abstract, but we know from states of high stress that we start find spicing time.

We know this right. The world becomes like a slow motion video because frame rate has increased. We know as a visual visions neuroscientists, I can tell you in my laboratory, we were doing studies with virtual reality where we can crunk up people's level, stressed by giving them certain visual stimuli, then their ability to pass information is clearly increasing.

In the time domain, they're find slicing much in the same way that when you look at a slow motion video, somebody dunk a basketball or something in that, sorry, because the frame rate went up, right? So when we are in high alertness, states are framing increases. When we are very relaxed, our frame rate decreases.

So if you're rick rubin's and you're lying there, look at the sky. Your frame rate is probably slower than if you're hyper focused on omegon, as you know. Like you sit like imagine a dreadfull situation where somebody sends you a text message, what to make a positive, somebody's having a child in your family and you, like, know, is a healthy a moment, baby OK.

I mean, seconds feel like minutes. Minutes feel like hours because you're fine. Slicing time, okay.

And then mommy, maybe you find, okay, great. Happy story ending. great. So when we're very relaxed, we tend to be in time more broadly. Now it's also true that your visual system and your perception of time are inextricably linked, such that if you close your eyes and you focused on in your internal state, you are fine sicking time.

And the second hand, if you will, is more less that the metronome rather, is your breathing or you in your heart rate from combined, when you open your eyes and you look at something in your immediate environment, when you move from so called into reception to exter reception, you start the your perception of time shifts fairly dramatically. And you now perceive time according to believe, not the speed of images moving in your environment relative to you. And then as you look out further on to, say, the horizon, you extend the time domain even more.

If you then imagine yourself out in the whole globe, you extend your time domain even more. So my mourning meditation, if you waits more of a perceptual exercise, is to step through these different time domains to close my eyes and focus on the internal state, opened my eyes and focus on something close by local further, look a bit further. Think about so myself on on the globe, the whole world moving.

So you're really extending your space domain. And then the time domain expands with IT. You know this is comes up when you see these little means of know anytime you're worried, you just remember you're a little dog on a little blue dot spending in the university, this kind of thing.

But you don't think that way. When you're stress, you're thinking i'm the blue dot, you're the problem, whatever you know, I want that you know you're not thinking. So this perceptual exercises is a way of training the nerve system, my nervous system, to shift deliberately between these different time domain.

And for me, it's been very useful for improving task switching, something that, as you probably have noticed, i'm not very good at. I go into the trench. I don't leave the trench very easily. Um so that's been very useful.

And if you are interested in this in more detail, there's a wonderful book um called a the secret poles of time and there's a hitchcock discuss in that book which the movie is about seventy five minutes long and during the course of that movie the background actually includes rising and setting of the sun and a bunch of different speeds of movement and interplay between the characters and your perception at the end of the movie is that a much, much longer period of time occurred because of some unconsciously your brain was paying attention to the circuit and signals and these other signals in an absolutely asm hitchcock, not a huge ge cock fan. But now I after seeing that, isn't like, wow, that's genius. He captured this space time thing.

What you see out the window is in one time domain. In the room is a different time domain. I want to tell you who killed him, but it's very, very, very interesting.

And so the point being that when your visual system is up close, focusing on things up close or internally, you're you're fine slicing. When you focus on things further away, you're more broadly focusing and so on and so forth. So that's a morning meditation.

I do IT only persecution. al. Exercise only takes about a minute or so.

And the other thing is that on the monitors, they are flashing out. That was your last question. So I I wanted to say a couple of things before we go. First of all, thanks to all of you who um stood out the night for the london ation.

I realized this stuff is like nerdy, detailed and there a lot of other things you could be doing with your evening and your time and so i'm very grateful that came together tonight for this. Um what I like to think was a discussion and I also just want to thank everyone for your interest in the podcast. IT is a labor of love, highly dependent on my team for doing all of IT.

I don't do IT alone by any stretch, but as much as I might seem like it's me talking to all of you, IT really is about all of you. That's the reason I do IT and i'm ever so grateful. And i'd certainly be remiss if I didn't say thank you for your interest in science. 我是。