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Julian Dorey Podcast
#349 - Harvard Neuroscientist on “GHOST” Receptor, Spiritual Realm & Dream Illusions | Baland Jalal
03:18:30
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- [00:00]
A
One day in California, as I am walking about, I bump into this guy who turns out to be one of the greatest neuroscientists alive, if not the greatest. Who V. S. Ramachandra. Take his class, sit in the front row, and every question he has, I'm just sitting there answering. I think he got impressed with that and so he took me into his laboratory, ended up becoming friends. In fact, we became best friends. Can you believe it? It was unbelievable. And this guy who is on Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the world literally just got that announcement and I'm sitting there with him talking about the human brain. He started to just read books to trying 24 hours. The first explanation, the brain is never wasteful. Why do dreams have this bizarre, strange feel to them? And the reason is simple. This is in REM sleep. These are the dreams where you see yourself on the moon. You're wrestling with an alligator. Why is that important? When you experience your dreams and you see yourself being chased and you can't get away and things are dangerous, you're more likely to face situations like that in your real life and survive.
- [00:52]
B
The one last night was so detailed. That's only a few minutes.
- [00:55]
A
So Ramachandra and I wanted to do an experiment on time perception in dreams. So that's crazy. That's really possible.
- [01:01]
B
Is there any science that could link this to some sort of otherworldly or spiritual endeavor?
- [01:08]
A
This is a very interesting and a deep question, actually.
- [01:10]
B
So, hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help.
- [01:18]
A
Thank you.
- [01:30]
B
Listen, it's a, it's a good look. This is a really. I was telling you before, before, like, you got to keep this. Everyone's known for like one very, like, simple thing online, right? You got the simple thing going. It's classy. It makes you look even more learned than you are.
- [01:44]
A
Thank you.
- [01:44]
B
And you happen to have like good hair and look like Michael Jackson in his prime a little bit.
- [01:48]
A
Well, thank you, brother. I appreciate that.
- [01:49]
B
Listen, it's gonna work out for you, I promise. But I'm very, very excited to talk to you today, Dr. Jalal.
- [01:55]
A
Same here.
- [01:55]
B
It was very cool to see you reach out because as you might imagine, I get a lot of people reaching out. It's usually like I'm hitting my head against the table, like, what the. So then when I get one where I'm like, whoa. Oh, that's good. I'm pretty excited about it's. Like finding a hundred dollar bill on the ground.
- [02:10]
A
Thank you, brother. I'm excited, man.
- [02:12]
B
So you do a litany of different things. As a neuroscientist you are currently researching at Harvard, Correct?
- [02:21]
A
Correct.
- [02:21]
B
Among many other things I'm sure we'll talk about today. But where you found, I guess, like a real niche and expertise is particularly within, like, sleeping dreams and ocd, Right? Is that fair to say?
- [02:35]
A
That's fair to say, yeah. There are some areas. So sleep paralysis and sleep and dreams is something that I've, you know, I've been fascinating with for a very long time. And ocd, as you mentioned, was something that I bumped into later on and. But yeah, these are all areas that I'm interested in. It all started if you want to go back there.
- [02:56]
B
That's exactly what I want to do. You're reading my mind.
- [02:58]
A
So let's go back to when I was a teenager in Copenhagen. So I grew up in Copenhagen. I grew up in the hood, in a ghetto like area. And so one day I was sleeping in my bed, you know, calmly. Everything was supposed to be calm, nothing dramatic. And I found myself, you know, that I found myself waking up consciously. So my eyes became aware. They opened. I saw my surroundings, I saw my room, but I was paralyzed from head to toe. So I couldn't move, you know, at all. I was paralyzed. And at this moment, at this point, I was scared. What do I do? Like, I try to scream, you know, oh, your mom, dad, you know, but the words just wouldn't come out of my. My throat was. No words. Very scary at this point. Then suddenly I have this realization that there's. There's an ominous creature in the corner of the room. And it's approaching me and it's coming closer and closer. And then finally it was on my chest, strangling me.
- [03:56]
B
Oh.
- [03:56]
A
You know, and, you know, pressing on my chest. And then I saw my legs flying up and down. And it was all this. This bizarre experience. And, you know, I was sure at this point I was. I was going to die. I mean, I was sure of that. Eventually I wrestled myself out of the state, so I was able to sort of get out of it. But the ramifications were huge. You know, the next day I was like, did I see a ghost? What happened? You know, was I visited by supernatural forces? What does all this mean? Right? And I couldn't really go to my parents, right at that point. You know, I. I told you earlier that as. As a kid, I was a very. I was the black Sheep in the family. I didn't usually do my homeworks. I had like 25 absent rate in. In high school. I was very, you know, I was a very rebellious kid my whole life. Never do any homework. The worst. I was the guy who entire school years were. Just never did any. Anything, you know.
- [04:52]
B
Were you in a gang?
- [04:53]
A
I was kind of in a gang. You know, I was a little bit in a gang and as a young kid. But, you know, in Copenhagen, the gangs were not that, you know, I wouldn't say there was that. We weren't killing people, but we were. There were stabbing. My best friend got, you know, shot at.
- [05:07]
B
Oh, shit.
- [05:07]
A
Like in his. In his house. My neighbor got shot in the head. You know, there was a lot of tons of stuff going on, but I wasn't. So I was starting to dabble in that world. But let's say put it that way.
- [05:18]
B
Shoot him in the foot, not the head.
- [05:20]
A
Let's put it that way.
- [05:20]
B
Gotcha. So gotcha.
- [05:22]
A
But anyway, so I had this experience. I was like, okay, I saw a ghost. What does this all. What does it mean? Right. What is this about? And so I decided to study this phenomenon closer. And I realized there's something called sleep paralysis. This state of being paralyzed, unable to. To move or speak as you wake up from sleep. And that's kind of started me in science and. Yeah, so that's how it started before.
- [05:42]
B
We get there all the way in. Because that's what we're going to be talking about today, I'm sure, a lot. There's actually one other thing that I wanted to note here. You are, as far as I know, the first Kurdish person is that I've had in here.
- [05:54]
A
Is that right?
- [05:55]
B
Yeah. And it's. It's cool to talk with you because that is. That subject matter of the Kurds has come up probably 30 to 40 times across the episodes I've done.
- [06:07]
A
Yeah.
- [06:08]
B
Whether it be talking with Joby Warwick or, you know, some of the former military guys who worked with the Kurds in the Middle East. But I bring it up because it's a very fascinating thing to me that a group of over 30 million people does not have their own country. And I have advocated on here for them to be able to have their own country, you guys, because you also basically have like, a lot of land that you run already. I don't know why we're not just drawing lines there. But, you know, you grew up in. In Copenhagen. Was that because you were displaced from some of. From where the Kurds were? I Guess like fighting over territory.
- [06:45]
A
Yeah, it's a great question. So my parents. I grew up. My parents were both orphans. So my. My mom, her. Her dad died very early on when she was a kid. My father, same thing. His father died very early, early on. Two orphans, and they found each other at some point. There was a lot of war in Iraq at the time, as you know, Saddam Hussein was attacking the Kurds, and my parents decided to. My father. He wanted Me. My father wanted to escape Iraq because of the war. He doesn't. He didn't want to go and partake in that war. Came to Bulgaria. That's where I was born, in Bulgaria. And eventually we. I was like five or six months infant, and we were in Copenhagen. We moved to Copenhagen. Now, on the topic of, like, onto the question of the Kurds. And so, yeah, definitely, you know, the issue of the Kurds has been a huge pro, you know, issue. You know, they haven't really had land and stuff like that. Personally, my parents and that generation was a lot. You know, they were into that a lot. You know, they found that, you know, the Kurds, you know, they need to have their own country and things like that. But I think our generation, My sister. My sister, my brother, my. You know, they're not that strict about it. I think they. They are more. They find themselves more as global citizens, I think. And because we grew up in Europe and we're sort of. We lived in Copa, you know, in Europe and in America and things like that, we're not attached to that idea, really. I think the most important thing is that Kurtz or any sort of group of people have rights. Have. Have, you know, their human rights covered that. They are not oppressed in any way. And. And I think, look, now the Kurts actually doing very well. You know, they aren't. They're pretty rich in the Iraqi region.
- [08:31]
B
Yeah, that. That's what's strange to me. It's like they have a incredibly sophisticated military structure and therefore, leadership structure. Yeah, I don't know. I always bring this up, and even, like, some of my reporter guys aren't really sure the semantics, but it's not like they're paying taxes to Syria and stuff like that. Like, they literally have their own Mad Max Fury Road area. It's just they don't, you know, they don't sit on any international commissions because of that. They don't have, I guess, like, they're not a part of some of the trade agreements that are allowed to happen in the region because they're not officially A country and all that. And I don't know. I just. I think the world is a really complex place, obviously. But my thought is any sizable group of people. I mean, if it's 10 people, I think you're kind of shit out of luck. But if you have a sizable population, whether it be the Druze. Yeah, Dr, U, Z, E. Or the Yazidis, who almost got exterminated from the planet back when ISIS was around, or the Kurds.
- [09:31]
A
Yeah.
- [09:32]
B
It's like, I feel like you should probably have a spot where you get a little voice in the matter. It just kind of feels like the right thing to do. But that's an interesting perspective you have because you didn't grow up in it.
- [09:43]
A
I think that's my perspective. And really what I'd love to see, and this has kind of been my own view, is that I'd love for people to like, for example, in Iraq, we have different. Like, there's a Shiites, there's Sunnis, there's Kurds, there's all these people. I'd love for them to unite more and sort of leave aside their cultural barriers and leave aside. That shouldn't be a barrier for unity.
- [10:05]
B
Yes.
- [10:06]
A
You know what I mean? Like the tribalism of, like, having to kill each other or fight each other because I'm Kurdish or I'm this or that, we should try to go beyond that. We're all human beings. We all are, you know, the same. We're all the same. You and I, you know, all of us are the same. And so that's kind of my view. I'd like more. Less nationalism, in a way, and more sort of understanding unity and. Yeah, personally, you know, growing up in Copenhagen, in the hood, my best friends were Turks, Iraqis, you know, I'm Kurdish, you know, and they're not supposed to get along in some cultural sense.
- [10:42]
B
Right.
- [10:43]
A
But my best friends were of that, you know, nationality, and I loved them more than my Kurdish friend. When I was in a. When we went to the gangs, went to fight, I was like, 14, 15, right. And so we'd use our fists and all that. Right. My cut. My Turkish brother would stand up for me more, perhaps than my Kurdish brother if I needed him. So for the idea of a me being Kurdish and you being Turkish and you being, you know, Arabic kind of eroded, and we all just became humans, and we just saw each other as the person you were inside. What was your level of loyalty? How was your heart? How was your mind? That mattered. So that kind of, for me, erased that whole Thing. And, you know, so that's beautiful. Color, nationality, all that just went away from me.
- [11:25]
B
Yeah, to be honest, I think that's how it.
- [11:27]
A
That's my view.
- [11:28]
B
You know, that's what we should be. You know, like, we. We make all these stories up. And I don't mean to over trivialize it, but my friend Eric Zuler, who's like a world traveler who finds his way into some very interesting situations, like, he got kicked out of Turkey a couple times for saying he was coming from Kurdistan. They didn't like that very much, but he always said, like, nations are just stories, countries are just stories.
- [11:49]
A
Stories, man. There are stories there. We make them up, man. We make it all up. Look, ultimately we have the same blood. You didn't choose to be born as Julian. You didn't. Were you born in New Jersey?
- [12:00]
B
I was technically born in Philly, but yes, in Philly. Right.
- [12:03]
A
Did you choose your parents?
- [12:04]
B
Nope.
- [12:04]
A
You didn't. You didn't choose your, like, how you look, your skin color, none of that. You know, you were just thrown into this vessel of flesh and blood that you call Julian. You got even your name. You didn't choose. For God's sake. Right? So the fact that you are here and that you are having a human experience as the person you are, that's what it is. And, you know, we shouldn't make that a difference. We shouldn't let these constructs that we create in our minds divide us. That's what I feel, man. That's what I feel. Do I sound like Michael Jackson now? Heal the world.
- [12:42]
B
Yeah, you do. You're doing great, by the way. Can you just pull in the mic a little bit when you're talking? Yeah, just keep it tight like that. That's perfect. So we left off, though, where you talked about this sleep paralysis event. You said you were a teenager. So what, like 15, 16, something like that?
- [12:57]
A
Well, at the. The time, I was like 18, maybe 18 hours, end of my teenage years. And. And so, yeah, that's when it happened, man, that experience. And so it really took me on this. It was a trip. It was a trippy experience. And I decided, well, I'm going to study this phenomenon further. I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna read books, and I'm gonna just devour them and figure out what the hell is this. So I looked at books, I started reading books, and lo and behold, I found something that was. That kind of sounded like what I experienced. I saw. You know, I heard about people lying in their beds, being paralyzed and space Aliens would come down on ships and they would experiment on the, on the sleeper. They would pull out semen. You know, I've had a couple of.
- [13:35]
B
Those guys in your seat, right? Yeah.
- [13:36]
A
So they take, they take out semen and then they would, you know, whisk them up to the spaceship and all that. So it's very, very exotic stuff. Yes. And so the question was, what is this? What's going on? Is this the brain playing tricks on you? Or is it actually, you know, space alien coming down from far away galaxies? That was the question. And I had to explore this. So when I went to Egypt, I did research. I started to do research and so I looked into the cultural ideas for it, and soon my research found that in Egypt, it's the evil genies. You know, the evil. Have you seen the Latin? The cartoon?
- [14:13]
B
Yeah.
- [14:13]
A
The evil Jafar, the evil genie that comes, you know, as huge muscles and. Right. Wants to kill Aladdin. That's kind of the cultural explanation for sleep paralysis in Egypt. So people will say that is the genie. The genie, the genies. It's called the jinn in Arabic.
- [14:28]
B
Yeah, I remember the jinn. That's the same thing you're talking about. Interesting.
- [14:32]
A
The jinn and the genie, same thing. So the jinn is what is causing sleep paralysis. That's the monster of this, the sleep paralysis monster in Egypt is the genie. And they have very, very evil intentions. They want to kill you when they want to violate you sexually, they want to do all kinds of things to you. And so, very terrifying explanation for sleep paralysis in Egypt.
- [14:52]
B
Wow.
- [14:53]
A
I went on then to study it in Italy, for example, and it turned out in Italy people would say it's this creature called the panda faga, which is this, you know, witch like creature. It can kill you, potentially harm you, do all kinds of things to you. So again, a cultural layer to the experience. I then wanted to compare sleep paralysis in Egypt to Denmark directly to see how these two cultures interpret the experience. Like, how do they interpret and sort of make sense of it?
- [15:25]
B
Yes.
- [15:26]
A
Why is that important? Well, because I knew from my time in Denmark that people in Denmark are very, let's say, secular in their way of thinking. You know, they don't believe in the spiritual world very much. They are more sort of science based, more physiological in their view of the world. So I thought, well, how would they understand something like sleep paralysis versus Egypt, where literally people are. They walk around and they just kind of are very spiritual and very religious overall. Right. So how do they, how do these two cultures digest Something so profoundly supernatural in nature. And it turned out that, first of all, we found that in Egypt, it's much more common. So it's twice as common as in versus Denmark. Okay. So in Egypt, very, very frequent. A lot of people have it.
- [16:13]
B
Okay.
- [16:14]
A
Versus Denmark. So that's the first finding. All right. Second finding. We found that in Egypt, the people who have it. So if I'm in Egypt, my name is Ahmed. I have it, and my name is Joe. I live in Denmark, and I have sleep paralysis on a frequent basis. The guy in Egypt has it three times more frequently. So the experience is. It's sort of. You just have it more. You have it maybe five times a week. Versus the Danish guy. He has it maybe one time a month.
- [16:42]
B
That's so terrifying.
- [16:43]
A
Terrifying, yeah. I'll get even. It's gonna be more spooky.
- [16:46]
B
Okay.
- [16:47]
A
The guy in. The guy in Egypt has greater fear of it. So they fear. Their fear of dying from sleep paralysis. It's Is about, like, it's. It's huge. I mean, it's like 50% of people in Egypt think that they can die from it. Literally. Like, they think that the experience is fatal. That's. That's, you know.
- [17:07]
B
Every time. Yeah.
- [17:09]
A
So the rate is like 50% of the people think it's fatal.
- [17:14]
B
Yes. But every time they experience it, or.
- [17:16]
A
Just once a month, it's a good example. So we didn't really get it down to if it's each time. So we just asked the question, like, do you think sleep paralysis can kill? And about 50% of the hundred people. Let's say we ask, or a thousand people. So 500 would say, yes, we think it can kill. So whether it's each time or not, it's just the general perspective of it that it's fatal.
- [17:37]
B
Right.
- [17:37]
A
Okay. Beside that, they have more vivid hallucinations, they have more fear. They feel it lasts much longer. So once they have it, they feel like it lasts for ages. So the Danish person, it feels like it lasts for a few seconds, Right? It's like, okay, I had it. It just lasted for a few seconds. The guy over here in Egypt, he feels like it lasts for hours. So it's like. It's a very amplified, prolonged, scary experience. Now, this was all. It all came back to one key finding, which was that the Egyptians, 90% of them, thought it was the evil genies. So because of that, you know, the cultural ideas was driving this versus the Danish people, where everybody pretty much said it was just the brain, it was just stress, it was just Anxiety. So literally, you saw how beliefs, your mind can shape the experience. It's kind of like a, you know, the placebo effect. I give you a sugar pill, I say you'll be better. Like space jam.
- [18:33]
B
Yep.
- [18:33]
A
You know.
- [18:33]
B
Yeah.
- [18:34]
A
Nocebo is the opposite. I give you this drink, I'll say it's poison. You drink it, you get dizzy, you get sick, you know it's poison, and you die. Right. That's the nocebo effect. So we believe that this is a profound example of the nocebo effect. The difference we saw, and we later replicated this finding in Italy, we found a similar pattern. Italians will say about a third of them, that it's these witch like creatures. And again, this experience is prolonged, the fear is amplified. They have vivid hallucinations and so forth. So clearly we find this very interesting pattern.
- [19:09]
B
Now, this is how old were you when you were finding this?
- [19:12]
A
So this. I found this when I was. I started my research as an undergraduate and then as I was moving to California and doing research there. So. Yeah. Yeah.
- [19:19]
B
All right, let me put a little bit of a timeline together here so I understand, like, how. How you got on into this. So you had the initial experience yourself as a teenager. Corre at the time, you're kind of like a little bit of a gangster going to school 25, 75% of the time.
- [19:33]
A
Exactly.
- [19:33]
B
Skipping the other 25, shooting people in the foot anyway. Exactly. But obviously you were a pretty intelligent guy. You just never like, found an interest in school or applied yourself. Is that fair?
- [19:46]
A
Well, maybe. I mean, it's a compliment, but I didn't feel intelligent. I always got bad grades. I felt like I couldn't make sense of any of it. But I'll take the compliment.
- [19:55]
B
Well, there was something going on there because then this happens, and then you sink yourself into studying that. So did you go to undergrad in Egypt? Did I understand.
- [20:06]
A
I did. So my grades were so poor I couldn't get into a university in Denmark.
- [20:12]
B
But they let you in during the Arab Spring in Egypt.
- [20:14]
A
It's money, you know, that had a pizza shop and so he could afford some of it. And then once I got there, I did one semester, and then my semester I did so well that they paid me for the rest of the.
- [20:24]
B
Oh, that's awesome.
- [20:26]
A
Yeah, because at that time I changed so radically. So I went from, like, poor grades. I never saw more than a D in my entire high school until I was like, 18, 19, and then to like this dramatic shift where I just started to just read books 24 hours. I'm very obsessive. You see, my nature. I'm very obsessive. I get into things. I just focus on it, like 24 hours. And so once I wanted to sort of crack the code of this phenomenon, I read books all the time. I did nothing but read books. And my mind, my brain really expanded. And obviously it started with sleep paralysis, but it was just leak. I want to just read other stuff as well. So I just got really into reading and thinking and writing poetry. I became very sort of. And mind you, I was philosophical as a kid. You know, growing up in the ghetto, I always was thinking a lot about my existing life, you know, life, what is meaning, and all that. So I was kind of philosophical. But there was no intellectual or academic hinge or, like, tethering. It was just like free, floating thoughts.
- [21:27]
B
Yeah.
- [21:28]
A
When I went to Egypt, my obsession got even more because I lived alone, pretty much, and I would just hang out with the poor kids on the street sometimes. But other than that, I was just read. So I'd read and then go down and hang out with the. With the. You know, the kids in the street sometimes for social interaction, you see.
- [21:45]
B
Did you speak their language when you were there?
- [21:46]
A
I learned.
- [21:46]
B
You learned it?
- [21:47]
A
Yes, I learned.
- [21:48]
B
How many languages do you speak?
- [21:53]
A
Okay.
- [21:57]
B
Is that okay? Kurdish?
- [22:15]
A
I don't. I don't speak that well. I speak a little bit Italian. Three and a half German. But German there, I learned in school. I was really bad at it, but I was supposed to. I was supposed to know it, so I got drilled in German since I was like 5 or 6. What other languages do we speak? I think that those are probably Spanish, Italian, Kurdish.
- [22:34]
B
Well, you speak English, obviously.
- [22:35]
A
A little bit. A little bit of English. I'm trying to learn. I'm still learning. And, yeah, I think those might be. Those might be it, I think.
- [22:43]
B
All right.
- [22:43]
A
I think so. That's.
- [22:44]
B
That. That's pretty good lineup right there. You can find your way around. So you go to Egypt, you learn the language.
- [22:49]
A
I learned the language.
- [22:50]
B
Sink yourself into studying.
- [22:51]
A
I just studied 24 hours, and then I learned Arabic from the street kids. And because the American University in Cairo went to American University, so I wasn't really speaking Arabic in that university.
- [23:01]
B
Oh, got it. Okay.
- [23:02]
A
That's why. That's how the street kids come in. It was kind of my own instinct of hanging out with street. Like, I went from ghetto kids to street kids. That's what I mean. That's what I'm trying to.
- [23:10]
B
Graduating.
- [23:11]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So. And then once I was in Egypt. I. Because of that drastic focus on books, I just got really good grades all of a sudden. Have you seen that movie called Gangster's Paradise? Movie?
- [23:30]
B
Yes.
- [23:30]
A
So Michelle Pfeiffer, right, she's the teacher, she gives everybody an A to start with. So you got all. Got an A. And then you have just have to keep that A until the end of your school or whatever. And then you just keep it. Instead of earning the A, you got the A and you just keep the A.
- [23:45]
B
You know what I mean?
- [23:46]
A
Same thing. When I went to Egypt, actually there was some. Because I had taken some classes in Copenhagen in literature, English literature because it was free universities free in Copenhagen. So I'd taken some classes and I had some like Ds and Fs. It transferred, but to Egypt. And once it transferred to Egypt, it. It showed up as an A. Oh, wow. So they told me, oh, you were perfect. 4.0. 4.0 GPA. I was like, what? Okay, I'll take it.
- [24:11]
B
You know, it's like that tick tock where they Change all the Fs to like an A plus.
- [24:15]
A
So it was just like, okay, good, I'll just keep that. And then I just kept it and graduated with 4.0. Everything was just ace from there.
- [24:22]
B
And that was full four years down there.
- [24:24]
A
Full four years. Yeah. And then the final year actually took my final year in California. So I went to final year. I had to sort of get out of Egypt. I felt like it was becoming. I had to have more challenge.
- [24:34]
B
Was that when the Arab Spring was happening?
- [24:36]
A
During the Arab Spring? Yeah, man, you're right on. It was on the Arab Spring. I went to at this point, I went to California. And one day in California, as I am walking about, you know, in San Diego, I bump into this guy who turns out to be one of the greatest neuroscientists of alive, if not the greatest.
- [24:57]
B
Who?
- [24:57]
A
You know, VS Ramachandran.
- [24:59]
B
Oh yeah, I've heard that name before.
- [25:00]
A
Yeah, One of the greatest neuroscientists. And I run into him and I was like, I'm starstruck. You know, I was like, rama, Ramachandrana. Kind of like, I'm shaking. What do I do with myself? Like I start sweating, you know, and. And he's kind of. He greets me. He's very warm, very kind. And you know, I was just so happy to meet him. I thought, okay, I have to take his class. So I take his class. I sit in the front row. Okay, I sit in his front row. And every question he has. I'm just sitting there answering it, every question. You know, he's. I think he got impressed with that. And so he took me into his laboratory, got into his laboratory, and we ended up becoming friends. In fact, we became best friends. Can you believe it? So I was with him for like four or five years, six years in the laboratory. He became like, best friend. He literally called me his third son. He had two other sons. He called me his third son. He was. He was my second father. Always together three or four hours every day. Would drive, you know, go to the supermarket with him, do all kinds of things with him. It was unbelievable. Here I'm here. Here's this kid in the ghetto going from nothing. And this guy, he's just on. It was just on Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Literally just got that announcement. And I'm sitting there with him, eating cookies and drinking, you know, in the cafeteria and having milk and cookies with him. Can you believe it? Talking about the human brain, how life can take you from nothing to, like.
- [26:20]
B
That's right.
- [26:21]
A
You know, to, like, shootings. And then here you are in California. Right.
- [26:25]
B
Well, you put yourself in that position too. You know, I feel like.
- [26:28]
A
I feel like I was blessed. I don't want to take any credit for it. For it. I feel like. I feel like I was blessed. It was a blessing. I didn't.
- [26:35]
B
That's very humble of you, but also, like, if you want to call it luck or a blessing or something, does that old American phrase, luck is where hard work makes up, meets opportunity?
- [26:45]
A
100. I think that's a very true one. And what happened was I did work really hard, become very serious about life, disciplined myself, I mean, didn't come easy. But my brain changed. So the brain can change. And I think that was a huge part of this whole thing. So the brain, as you know, is hyper flexible. We have different modules in the brain. You have a structure called the prefrontal cortex, which is outer layer. Then you have the temporal lobes, the emotional part of the brain. It's right here behind your ears. You have the occipital lobe, which is the vision part of the brain. So you have different parts of the brain. This is called the cortex. Now, the brain can change. It can change its form. And once its form changes, your personality changes, too. Your discipline changes. For example, let me give you one concrete example. There's a region called the anterior cingulate and the mid cingulate cortex, which is just beneath this layer called the cortex. The cortex Is the outer layer helmet.
- [27:45]
B
Yeah.
- [27:46]
A
So the, that cingulate cortex, that region, there's, there's, there's neurons there. The more you use your, the more disciplined you are. And the more you take action, even though you don't want to take certain actions, the more that portion of the brain will grow. So for example, Baland, he's lying there, he's sleeping, he doesn't want to get up and take a cold plunge. Okay. Or Julian doesn't want to go to the gym. Right. So you're sitting there and thinking about it for three minutes. Should I go to the gym? Shouldn't I go? Should I go? Shouldn't, you know? No. Yes. No. Yes. You decide to go. When you decide to go, that mid cingulate cortex will literally grow. And the more you actually do that, the more you take up the challenge and you say, the hell with it, I'm just going to go. The more the cingulate cortex will grow larger, it will become thicker and literally expand.
- [28:37]
B
And does this happen in the other direction as well? When you go the opposite 100%, it shrinks. Yeah.
- [28:42]
A
So the, the less you just. So the more you decide, nah, I'm not gonna go for that run, Nah, I'm not gonna wake up and go to school today. My entire life was a dead mid singular cortex, right? It was, it wasn't active at all. So suddenly it became very active. And that's because the brain has these synapses. Synapses are. So there are neurons in the brain and then between. And neurons have wires, axons and dendrites. So dendrites are sort of wires that receive information from the axon, which is a wire from the neurons. And between them there are synapses that allow for communication. This is a fancy way of saying that these synapses and connections between neurons can grow our entire life. So the more we do things we don't want to do, the more we challenge ourselves, the more we take action, the more we will grow new synapses and allow for the brain to become more plastic so we can get into plasticity. There are certain, there are certain things that have to occur for plasticity to really run its course. For example, you have to be hyper attentive. Right? So if I live in the ghetto and I have the same routines every single day. I go to the, you know, I come home, I go to school, I come back, you know, I go out, fight this guy, come and you know, I have all these routine things I do every single day. I will have very Little plasticity. Why? Because the brain doesn't work like that. It doesn't change itself because it sees. Look, it's just the same thing over and over. There's no reason for me to change. The brain is not wasteful in that way. However, when you do new things and you put yourself in new environments, your attentional system becomes active. And this is a system called the nucleus basalis is in the sort of the mid central part of the brain. It produces neurons called acetylcholine. And acetylcholine neurons are basically attention driving neurons. This is your tension system. So whenever I see, like if I see this girl over there and she's really pretty, I'll have a lot of acetylcholine attention focusing on her way, for example, right? Or if I go to travel to Egypt, for example, and everything is new, guess what? I have a lot of acetylcholine attention because everything is new. I have to be aware of the streets, I have to be aware of the new mountains. And maybe there's a new lion over here. Using figurative language, obviously. But you know, things are new. And so my brain says, look, since you are new territory, you better hell change your structure for survival reasons. So if you. Right, or Joey or anybody wants to change their brain, they have to go to new places or do new things because that's what triggers and prompts the brain to change its structure. Right? So if that makes sense, it's survival. So that's the first re. That's the first factor for changing your brain. And I had that in Egypt, literally is an example of me going new territory. The brain says, look, you are in survival mode change. Second factor is dopamine. Dopamine is this reward chemical we have in our brain. There are structures in the brain, fancy names like the, you know, nucleus accumbens and, you know, basal ganglion regions and things like that. Just fancy words for neurons a little bit deep, a little bit beneath the cortex. And these are involved in reward or anticipation of reward, in fact. So not even reward. So if I am again, if I'm hugging a girl or if I'm hugging my mother, that's rewarding, but it's not that much dopamine. It's more endorphins and feel good chemicals like oxytocin, oxytocin, vasopressin, you know, these kinds of chemicals you have. But if I'm anticipating a meal, tons of dopamine or before sexual encounters, tons of dopamine, right. So that's anticipation of joy. Anyway, Dopamine, you also need. So you need reward. And so anytime you do something new and it's rewarding, that's when you get especially a lot of. Of plasticity in the brain. So you have to have these two things, these two factors. And I think I had that in Egypt. It's very rewarding for me to learn new things. I was driven, and that's how my brain changed. I must have gotten new synapses. And so that took me from ghetto to the Arab Spring in Egypt, all the way to the top of the palace with the prince of neuroscience, the king of neuroscience. Here I am, you know, so that's how they're all. That whole journey. Yeah.
- [33:08]
B
Joe, how are we doing with that sound outside? Is that okay? It's fine. I'll stick it to noise around that. We're good. So you. What, What's. How do you pronounce his name again? I've heard that name before.
- [33:17]
A
Vs Ramachandran.
- [33:18]
B
Vs. Ramachandran. Can we pull him up as well, Joe? Give him a big old shout out. So you're spending six years with this guy?
- [33:24]
A
Oh, man, I spent not only six years. So six years was the guy. The time where we were like best friends and just hanging out every single day and going to the beach and talking about science and the history of science and just really shaping my brain, literally. I had the greatest scient mentor me personally. Right. But then, unfortunately, what happened to my dear friend is that he got Parkinson's. So the world greatest scientists or neuroscientists get Parkinson's brain disease.
- [33:52]
B
That's so cool.
- [33:53]
A
He slows down. He becomes, you know. So Parkinson's is that you get masked expressions. You can't really smile that much because you need dopamine for smiling. Your movement is very slow. You walk. You walk with a sort of what's called a. You have like these special walk. You walk like you can't really move. You know, you've seen Muhammad Ali and also Michael J.
- [34:15]
B
Fox.
- [34:15]
A
Michael Jake Fox. So you have this and you got this. And so I, you know, my. From there on, I tried to really take care of him. So I went from, like having fun with him more to taking care of him, nurturing him, being a. Like a son to him. Like when I got sick at one point, I got sick when I was there in my early years. He. He was so kind. He gave me his own car, like a Jaguar. What happened to you? I was. I had some. I had some sort of inflammatory issues with like my. You thought it was my Heart and all kind of things. But it turned out not to be very serious. But I got a couple of months of where I was pretty sick. He was like, you know, he gave me everything, man. His own car, everything. And so when he, when he got sick, I really took care of him and I really, you know, try to be a close friend and yeah, just help him through. Through that and. And I still visit him. I just saw him last year. He doesn't talk that much now. He can't really talk that much. It's hard to understand. But just being in his presence, I can see in his eyes that he can still see it's me. He still feel that happiness when we're together, like, you know, that kind of friend thing, you know, we have.
- [35:24]
B
And sure, he's very proud of you and everything you've done.
- [35:29]
A
He's very proud of me. But he's also hard to impress. You see, his standards are very high. He's hard to impress, but he is. He always says, this is my star student. Still. That's still a student, you know, this is my star student.
- [35:38]
B
I think he's impressed then, man.
- [35:40]
A
He was a great guy. If I can give anything back to him, honor him is what I'll do. As long as I. And he knows this. As long as I'm alive, I will honor him. Because I really know what he did for me is why I'm here today. He opened up all the doors. I, you know, you can be as smart as you want, you can be, get 4.0 right scientific papers, but when you have a mentor, that's the top of the hierarchy, that's when doors open. And so he opens, open a lot of doors for me, go to Cambridge and Harvard and all that.
- [36:09]
B
So you mentioned it as one of the traits you look for in friends growing up, but you mentioned loyalty and stuff like that. I have a great appreciation for people who understand where they came from and the people who allowed them to do what they do. And that comes across heavily. So I'm sure he feels that as well. If he's calling you his star student, I, I think he. I think he's probably impressed with. With where you're getting to. So you're doing a good job, man.
- [36:34]
A
Yeah, thank you, brother. I really appreciate it. Julian, man, but look, I think little did I think that ever I should. I would have like a mentor that would like. I would love just like a father or like a very close uncle. I never thought this would happen to me. Like you'd have somebody who's literally so close that, you know, you know, you don't think this will happen to you. And then see him getting sick and you kind of feel like, well, life can really throw you curveballs. It can be very hard. And so it's very important to honor those who really took care of you. Yeah, and I'll do that, man. I can continue to do that.
- [37:11]
B
Yeah, that's that. I had said it when you first mentioned it, but it's like a very cruel thing from the universe that someone who studies the brain and all these different things that then they get afflicted with something that affects their function from their brain.
- [37:26]
A
This guy was a superstar. He was literally so talented, you can't believe it. Like, so you see talent today. For example, you may see Jordan Peterson, very talented at, you know, at giving lectures. Mesmerizing. This guy was the superstar. If he had been alive during. Or he's still alive, thank God.
- [37:44]
B
But being able to speak how he.
- [37:45]
A
Been young, young and. And healthy during this time, he would have been. He would be number one. He was so mesmerizing speaker. Jordan told me during one of our conversations, he said that he once had Ramachandran give a lecture at Harvard back in the 90s. And he literally said that was the most mesmerizing speaker he's ever seen. The most mesmerizing. When he saw Rama, you know, so it tells you a lot from somebody who's himself extremely, very, very talented speaker, very mesmerizing himself. Giving. Giving praise to who was like, really unbelievable, you know, star.
- [38:26]
B
Now, he obviously can't unfortunately communicate like that anymore because of his affliction. But I know Parkinson's, like, kind of has a range to it sometimes how it. How it affects people, but, you know, can he. Does he still do any work or research or things like that? Is. Is he able to contribute to, I don't know, some of the stuff you're working on?
- [38:48]
A
Unfortunately, that. That stopped, like, I would say, four or five years ago. It just became too slow. So we couldn't really do that. You know, we couldn't. We couldn't continue our work in the scientific sense. But yeah, as I said, I saw him, I think was it in January or something? I was at his home. It was. It was lovely to see him. He was a bit better this year than the previous year.
- [39:09]
B
I saw him.
- [39:10]
A
He was a bit better. My. My own pops with my own dad was there and.
- [39:14]
B
Oh, that's cool.
- [39:14]
A
So my dad and him were all both together and we went out, have had Food and went to his house and. And we hang out and, you know, it was. It was. It was. It was beautiful, man. It was. It was a good experience. And, yeah, I treasure that.
- [39:28]
B
Aren't they. See, you can't trust this stuff when you see. I'll see things in passing and, like, not look at it, but it's, like, stored in there as, like, a headline somewhere. Aren't they working on some new treatments right now for Parkinson's that could potentially reverse it, or am I making that up?
- [39:45]
A
No, there are different. There are different technologies that they're working on. So one is deep brain stimulation. So in Parkinson's, you have parts of the brain that has to do with automatic movement. So they call it basal ganglia.
- [39:57]
B
Yes.
- [39:58]
A
Basal ganglia is deeper inside the brain. It has to do with moving automatically versus the cortex, where you move voluntarily. So when I move, I grab something over here, I move my hand from here to A to B. That's the cortex, the motor cortex out here. The basal ganglia has to do with automatic movements, automatic, involuntary movements. So on that note, for example, if I. If I get a. If I have a stroke, if. If I tell you, tell me to smile. Balance. Smile.
- [40:32]
B
Baland. Smile.
- [40:33]
A
Okay, now I'm going to smile. Okay. It looks hideous.
- [40:36]
B
Yeah. Your eyes aren't doing it for real.
- [40:37]
A
You don't have these muscles. The Hashem smile. You don't have these. You know, it all seems. This is because this is called a cortical smile. Cortical smile. Now, Julian is a great photographer, and he wants me to really look good on screen. Okay. On a phone.
- [40:53]
B
You're looking great over here. Thank you.
- [40:54]
A
I appreciate that. What you would do then, you would say a very good joke, and I would laugh and my basal ganglia would fire with activity and I would have a real smile, and that would look much more charming, you see? Yes, that's the basal ganglia. Now, the basal ganglia. The neurons in the basal ganglia are dying off in Parkinson's. And so how do you reactivate those neurons? How do you revive those neurons, make them come alive again? And it turns out that you really. It's. It's difficult to get deeper in the brain. So we can stimulate the brain on the outer layer on the cortex, as I mentioned, the outer layer, it's easier because you can have a magnet and you stimulate it. You go and you stimulate the brain and you can revive some of those neurons or make them more active. Right. But deeper in the brain, it's harder. It's more Difficult. And so how do you get in there? So one potential way to get in there is a. You can have a helmet that has. It's called photobiomodulation. It's a newer technique. And so you have light go through the brain and it can go deeper and it could potentially make those neurons more active. There's a helmet called. What is it called? It's neuronic. And they're not paying me, but they send me a helmet. Free helmet.
- [42:14]
B
They're not paying you?
- [42:15]
A
They're not paying me. Yeah.
- [42:16]
B
All right, we're going to check your.
- [42:17]
A
Bank account after they send me a helmet, actual helmet, about $2,000 helmet. They sent it to me and they asked me to try it out.
- [42:28]
B
That looks like an I've fallen and can't get up helmet.
- [42:30]
A
There you go.
- [42:31]
B
New one. Okay, so what is. So what does this do?
- [42:36]
A
This will go inside your brain and the light emanating. It's called red light. So infrared light?
- [42:42]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:43]
A
It's. It's deeper. It's not. You can't really see it with your eyes, but it can penetrate the skull, go in there, and then it can act on the mitochondria inside the cells and make them more active. And so the cells that you won't necessarily. It won't create new neurons, obviously, neural, what's called neurogenesis, the birth of new neurons is very rare in the human brain. Okay. But you can actually make some of the neurons that are, you know, less. They're deficient, you can make them more active by using. Using these kind of techniques. So.
- [43:11]
B
Wow.
- [43:12]
A
But it's good. It has sort of an all purpose, all purpose, you know, function to it. So my sister had insomnia and she tried it. She has an insomnia going on. I said, look, you can try it. I'm. I'm okay myself. I'm. I'm fine right now. You can try it. And so she tried it and actually she got better within a week, you know.
- [43:29]
B
Whoa.
- [43:30]
A
Starting to improve. Yeah. So it's quite, quite something to, to see.
- [43:34]
B
You know, I don't like to assume we're going to get everything solved and all that, but sometimes I get like a little excited in my head that we're living in an era where the exponential growth scientifically is still a thing. They say eventually that'll stop, but it's still a thing, which means we're building on the best building blocks ever, as you always are with exponential growth. And that there are so many horrible things right now that we take for granted is like, well, you're fucked with it. That, you know, maybe it's five years, maybe it's 10 years or 15. It's gonna be like, oh, that's gone. We're good, right? You know, like something crazy right now that it'd be like if you walked in there, it feels like a death sent in. 15 years be like, all right, just step over here. Give me five minutes. You're good, right? Like, am I crazy to. To feel that way about innovation?
- [44:24]
A
No, not at all. Look, so for example, depression, let's say depression, what you've seen for, like, 30, 40 years, what we've been doing is that somebody comes in, we give them a pill, ssri or, you know, something like that, and they take it. And they may take it that for six months at least, but it's typically a year they take it. Most people don't even get better. Let's say 50%. Let's say at the most, get some. Some. A little bit better. Tons of side effects, you know. Oh, yeah, sexual dysfunction. They, you know, get gain weight. You know, all these side effects. They get dizzy. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Right. And then. So what do you do? Well, something called tms, as I mentioned before, stimulation of the cortex. What you can do now is that literally instead of a year on drugs and potentially getting better or changing, like four or five drugs, if the one didn't work, you have this machine. You put it on the left side of the brain, you stimulate it, okay? In one day, you can potentially cure people with depression. 80, 90% of people will get better. 80 to 90. Just one day.
- [45:32]
B
One day.
- [45:32]
A
One day. So these are newer trials coming, but it seems very promising. So this is some of the stuff over at Harvard Medical School that I've been involved in in the last year. Very promising. So put it on the skull, stimulate it like this, and you literally will. In one day. You take a drug as well. And this is just one for one.
- [45:50]
B
Now, what's the drug?
- [45:51]
A
The drug will boost neuroplasticity.
- [45:53]
B
It's not an ssri.
- [45:54]
A
No, it's just one. Like, for one day. You can, like, Tylenol, something like that, right? It will boost SSRIs. SSRI. Oh, sorry. Boost neuro. What's called neuroplasticity. And specifically, what's called neurotrophic factors. So neurotrophic factors for your nerdy audience. Okay, for those of you in the audience who like these kind of things.
- [46:12]
B
No, this is great.
- [46:13]
A
You like it.
- [46:14]
B
Don't worry about it.
- [46:14]
A
Okay, so you have what's called BDNF and gdnf. These are neurotrophic factors, this meaning proteins like fertilizers in the brain. And when you have a lot of those proteins, what will happen is these synapses, these gaps will increase more rapidly. It allows for growth in the brain. And that is literally some of these drugs will do. This is what a trip will do. If you go to, like, when you go to Egypt or new country, you will have more BDNF and gdnf. In fact, if you exercise, if Julian goes out and takes a run and, you know, or do some kind of cardiovascular exercise, you will have more BDNF and GDNF. Another factor that allows for plasticity in the brain 100%. So you don't only need to travel, you can also just exercise.
- [46:58]
B
Yeah, that's what I feel like sometimes belong. Like people want to solve so many of these problems and we see a society where it's like, oh, just throw a pill at it or something.
- [47:08]
A
Yeah.
- [47:08]
B
But like, I don't know if this is a great example, but if my computer, I just got one that has like eight terabytes of space. But let's say, you know, these are big files. I keep a lot of files on there. If I start filling it up with seven and a half terabytes, 7.7 terabytes, it's going to run slower. And then, you know, sometimes like my desktop look like a war zone. A couple weeks ago, just things everywhere. Right. And I had storage filled on the last computer. It's like I went in there, I took the time, I cleaned up the whole desktop. It's completely clean now and organized everything. And then I also went and I cleared data. I moved some stuff to external hard drives I've been putting off to do. You know, it was like a couple hours to clean things up and everything, so I had to put in effort. But now the computer ran great and then I transferred to the new computer. Now it's running fast as hell. So it's like a little bit of time. An effort creates a. Creates some sort of solution that mathematically makes sense. And I like, it's not a perfect parallel, but like so many afflictions we see, I'm not talking about Parkinson's or things like that where it's something completely out of your control, but so many afflictions that are bad, you know, be it depression or other things like that. Instead of a pill, there are things like, well, do you exercise? No. Okay, go exercise for an hour a day, do a half hour of cardio, move some weights, get to feel better about yourself, Go for a walk out in nature, not on a treadmill or something like that. Experience the outside. If you're a male, it boosts your testosterone. It's like, you know, so do you ever get frustrated that people also have some very human, basic biological, evolutionary things in front of them that they could just do and work into their day as a new plasticity for habit and they just kind of refuse to do it?
- [48:56]
A
Yeah, we see that a lot. I mean, it's a huge problem. So think about this. I mean, when you sleep, for example, you have good sleep, tons of plasticity, and healing occurs in sleep. Like, so when you go through different stages of sleep, you have something called deep sleep, which is sort of the third stage of sleep. During this stage, literally, you have cells regenerate, you have skin regenerate, you have cardiovascular regeneration. Your memory is all the memories from your day will consolidate, meaning they will sort of fall in place. You have a region called the hippocampus behind your ears. Memory part of the brain. It will literally take information from day and store it in different localities in the brain during this stage. So when we rob ourselves of this stage, we are robbing ourselves of physical healing after that. After deep sleep, you hit REM sleep, which is arguably even more important. Both during deep sleep and REM you have like things like growth hormones. Growth hormones, mainly deep sleep. But rem, you have things like testosterone, you have emotional healing. So during REM sleep, what happens is very interesting. So neurons in a part of the brain called the Lucas Coeruleus is about 32,000 pitch black cells in the lower part of the brain.
- [50:11]
B
Locus coeruleus.
- [50:12]
A
Locus coeruleus. Sounds like a gladiator.
- [50:14]
B
I was going to say it sounds like. I'm looking at behind you. It sounds like Marcus coeruleus. It sounds like Maximus desmos meridian.
- [50:20]
A
Exactly, exactly. But those cells, right, they produce a chemical called noradrenaline. This is the chemical cousin of adrenaline. So whenever you're stressed, you have a lot of adrenaline in the system. You are very hyped up, you're agitated, you're excited potentially. And so this is no adrenaline right? Now when you are in REM sleep, you have no noradrenaline. Noradrenaline is absent. Okay, and this is interesting, the only phase in the 24 hour cycle where the stress chemical noradrenaline is absent from your system is during REM sleep, is during REM sleep. I'll get to the punchline. Now why is that important? Well, because when I'm in REM sleep and I'm dreaming, REM sleep is stage of sleep where we have vivid and lifelike crisp dreams. These are the dreams where you see yourself on the moon, you're wrestling with an alligator, playing soccer with Messi at the same time, and then you're suddenly in Buckingham palace as well, and everything is warped. This is in REM sleep.
- [51:21]
B
Right now I'll be getting REM sleep. That's good.
- [51:24]
A
REM is important. Now I'll tell you. Now I'll tell you. Your brain. During rem, in the lower part of the brain, you have something called the pons in the medulla, two structures. Okay. In the lower part of the brain, they send down a chemical called glycine and another chemical called gaba. These are inhibitory neurotransmitters. They calm things down.
- [51:43]
B
Yes.
- [51:44]
A
They go down through the spinal cord and then they're called in the spinal cord they paralyze your entire body. So you're entirely paralyzed from head to toe during REM sleep. Okay. Now you are paralyzed in rem. You're having these vivid and lifelike crisp dreams. And then I mentioned no adrenaline is absent. So that means the stress chemical that allows you to be agitated and anxious is not there. Now Julian asks the hundred million dollar question, why is that important? That is important because when you experience your dreams and you see yourself being chased by a monster and you're running and you can't get away and things are bizarre and strange and dangerous, but there's no stress chemical in the system. That means you can you learn to deal with the world without stress and anxiety. So your brain will lay down new circuits without stress and anxiety, making you more flexible in your output and the way you deal with the world. So it's literally like a way of training your system and your brain to be more flexible and how to and cope better with stressful situation without a stressful chemical. Does that make sense?
- [52:55]
B
Yes. And it also literally inhibits the chemicals that would be causing that in the daytime if you had it while you're experiencing something that that's an illusion and not real because you're suspended from. Whoa. That's like.
- [53:06]
A
It's important. You know why? Also, it's important. You just made me think of something. You know people with ptsd?
- [53:11]
B
Yes.
- [53:12]
A
They have tons of noradrenaline when they're awake. So they walk out and they see a mouse and they go, oh, my God, this is Terrifying. There's a mouse on the street because it reminds them of some hand grenade or something they saw in Baghdad. Right. So this is what PTSD is about. It's taking a fear memory from, you know, Baghdad or Afghanistan and bringing it to New Jersey or, you know, to. To. To California. Yeah, we're not. They're not supposed to do that. Right. So they have tons of noradrenaline in their system. And that's a problem because. Because of their noradrenaline, they can go into. They cannot go into REM sleep because you need noradrenaline to shut off during REM sleep. And so they. They lack this ability to take their daily experiences and experience them in their dreams without anxiety. And so that perpetuates the trauma and the anxiety they have during the day. Does that make sense? I want to make sure that you get this because I'm sometimes a bit convoluted.
- [54:10]
B
No, that's. You explain that very well.
- [54:12]
A
My point is this. If you have tons of noradrenaline in your system, you prevent yourself from going to REM to have restful sleep, because you cannot go into REM without shutting down noradrenaline. Does that make sense?
- [54:28]
B
Yes. Which. And in rem, and then when you.
- [54:30]
A
Are most rebuilding when you are in rem, you. That would in turn buffer you and make you less. Less anxious during the day. So it becomes a vicious cycle for these people.
- [54:39]
B
You know what's crazy? So do you know Luisa Nicola at all?
- [54:43]
A
No.
- [54:44]
B
I gotta hook you up with Luisa. She's right here in New York City. She's a neurophysiologist, works with high performers, extremely, extremely smart, loves every. Studying every part of the brain. So there's some things you're saying that also, like, remind me of some conversations I've had with her. But the first time I talked with her was earlier in 2024. And without going through the whole litany, I had been dealing with a lot of health problems for a few years, and I had begun treatment to take care of that. It was something called eosinophilic asthma, which, like, crashed my whole immune system for four years. So I started treatment in November 2023. That treatment wasn't supposed to really start to work until, you know, late February, early March, 2024, right when I was talking with Louisa and it was going to start working a little bit at a time. In hindsight being 20 20, it did. It worked well. But Louisa put me over the top with kind of like fixing my body from off of the very broken Thing that it was. And one of the things she talked about is she came here to record a podcast with me. And so she saw my place, and she saw the skylight out there. She saw the skylight over my bedroom. She saw. I love the lighting in this place because this is the only room that's not lit. She saw my big windows right there that let light in. I live right next to New York City, the most lit city, you know, in America. It's never off. And then she looked at the French doors on my bedroom, and she said, do you dream? She asked me, do you dream? I said, come to think of it, not really, no. She's like, how much do you sleep? I'm like, I put myself on a schedule, and now I sleep seven, eight hours a night. And she goes, you're not getting seven to eight hours of good sleep. You're not getting REM sleep. And she started to explain this whole thing to me. And she said, the light that you are letting in, and then to combine that with the stress of your job and everything means you have cortisol. Like, she kept it very high level. You have cortisol, at the very least, running through your system at all times. Your body's completely off the. What's the word that starts with an S?
- [56:46]
A
Circadian.
- [56:47]
B
Circadian rhythm and all that. It starts with a C, I guess. And then she's like, you need to sleep with an eye mask.
- [56:54]
A
Yeah.
- [56:55]
B
I was like, what? She's like, sleep with an eye mask. And I'm like, that. That feels like a little. Not heterosexual. I don't think I'm gonna do that.
- [57:02]
A
She's like, fine, have a problem.
- [57:03]
B
I'm like, all right. It. I order an eye mask, I will never not sleep without one again. I. I dream now every single night. And I dream, like, extensive dreams that would be required in the REM area. And it completely, like, whatever that back, literally 50 to 60%, was to start to begin feeling like myself again. I'm telling you, it wasn't fully overnight, but throughout that year, as the rest of my body got better from the other stuff, the combination of sleeping seven to eight hours with the eye mas having light out of the system and, like, sleeping deeply, totally rebuilt my brain. I'm firing on a level that I haven't in years, since before I got sick. And it was just that simple thing. And I'll thank her about that forever. But you just reminded me of that, because some of the patterns you're discussing, which you're actually going even deeper with Some of, some of the chemicals that literally fire in your body when you're doing this. It's like, duh, how is that answer not in front of me the whole time?
- [57:58]
A
You know, it's important. Look, REM sleep is important. Like another chemical that's being shut off during REM is serotonin. So you have a structure called the dorsal nucleus in the lower part of the brain. Again, produces serotonin. During REM sleep, serotonin stopped firing altogether. Okay, so you have no serotonin in the system during REM sleep. Now you might ask, why is that important? Well, it's a kind of a replenishment, right? It's a replenishment for serotonin. Serotonin is the chemical involved in mood, it's involved in, well, being, sense of stillness, sense of I feel good in my body, right? That's serotonin. Literally. I mean, when you have depression, you have typically load serotonin. And I give you a drug to boost serotonin. So that's the standard therapy for it, right? So if you, if you're not getting REM sleep and you're not replenishing serotonin again, again, you have another problem. So it shows you how important REM sleep is. And cognitive tests, there's tons of studies. REM sleep, you have, you have low rem, that means you have very low. You have cognitive tasks. You will perform very poorly on cognitive tasks, IQ tasks, that's all rem. Now mind you, you have, you. So you sleep in four. You have these stages of sleep, stage one, two, three and four. And then so four, it's a deep sleep stage of sleep. And then you have rem. Right? But it's important to keep in mind, Julian, that it's not like you have so 1/3, so 1. So that's the first cycle you have. Let's say these are not, these are 90 minute cycles. The first cycles you have tons of deep, deep sleep. So in the first part of the night, night you have tons of deep sleep, okay? And you have maybe a couple of minutes of REM, a few minutes of REM, and then you go through another 90 minutes minute cycle. REM expands a bit more and then third cycle, REM more and then by the morning you have maybe 30 minutes of REM. Now I'll tell you why this is important. It's important because it shows us if I only sleep until 4am or 3am, I would have a tons of deep sleep, meaning I'm physically okay, I can run from a tiger, I can Sprint, I won't get an angling injury. However, my REM sleep is still very deprived because I didn't get from 4 to 7, which I'm supposed to. So I didn't merely just strip my sleep of entirety of like 50% of REM. I maybe I removed 75% of REM and all the emotional and cognitive benefits of REM. Do you see that crucial point?
- [60:26]
B
Yes.
- [60:26]
A
Meaning you can't just sleep until 4 and then run to the airport and think, oh, I got 50% of REM, I'm good. No, you can run, all right. You can maybe do some sports, but your mind and your emotions will be all over the place.
- [60:39]
B
It's exponential, it ramps up. That makes so much sense. I always wonder, wonder like when I get up to piss at like 2:30 in the morning, I've had little dreams. I'm like, ah, what was that? You know, like thinking about I want to take a piss, right. And then when I come back and then fall asleep again, that's when I have the wild dreams. Like last night, that's exactly what happened. I what? And it wasn't even. I probably got up to piss at like 4:30. So I slept another hour and a half and it was like cribs, like that turned into this crazy story and everything.
- [61:09]
A
Right?
- [61:09]
B
And I'm like, now I'm. You're talking. I'm like, that's usually what happens. So that makes a lot of sense. So we're dreaming, Dreaming more when that happens.
- [61:17]
A
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.
- [61:18]
B
Yeah.
- [61:19]
A
So it's all the rem, man. REM you gotta have. REM is so important. But again, you have to have deep sleep as well. So you can't skip the first night either.
- [61:25]
B
Right.
- [61:26]
A
But these stages are important for, for, yeah, for well, being in a sense of, of, of, of, of just feeling like yourself.
- [61:32]
B
Yeah. And you can, you can effectively, you can effectively reset your body when you change a habit like that. Like you were talking earlier about how now I'm gonna up the terminology. It was a little while ago, but you were talking about plasticity. I'll keep it there. And you were talking about how, you know, you can train the brain to do new habits. And you were relating it to how you suddenly sunk into reading and, and going to a new place in Egypt and all that put together, created like you just sinking yourself into this.
- [62:05]
A
Yeah.
- [62:06]
B
And the other side of that, like, it makes me think of the mic. I think it's a Michael Jordan quote where he's like, the day you skip that One thing is the day you form a bad habit because now you're shrinking it in the other direction. With sleep, you can effectively form the bad habit for a while, which I wouldn't recommend. I did do that for years. Don't do it. But like, you can form the bad habit, lose your health along the way, which it contributed to me losing my health. It wasn't the cause, but it certainly didn't help. Right. You can look sickly, not think. All the best. And then when you decide it's it, I'm going to dedicate myself to sleeping seven, eight hours a night. I'm going to get onto a real schedule with that. If I got to do a sleep stack, including, you know, I wear the mouth tape, the whole bit, you know, if I got to do that to sleep better, I can like you can form that new habit and effectively, at least through my experience, like reverse a lot of mistakes you've made in the past. So people out there, I'm bringing this up because there may be people out there thinking like, God damn, like, I haven't been sleeping over the last five, six years. I work really hard doing this, this or that. Am I screwing myself over? They can, they can make a change and suddenly, you know, maybe get, I'm speaking figuratively, but correct me if I'm wrong, like get some years back in a way.
- [63:16]
A
Yeah, 100% you can.
- [63:17]
B
Wow.
- [63:18]
A
It's very true.
- [63:19]
B
Wow. So you started with the sleep paralysis stuff because it was personal, right?
- [63:24]
A
I started with the sleep paralysis because it was personal.
- [63:26]
B
But this, you know, I imagine probably when you were in Egypt, this very quickly turned to you just being like neuroscientists interested in the brain. Because everything looking at was related to the brain.
- [63:37]
A
100 like beliefs. How does belief emanate in the brain? How does, how does empathy come about in the brain? How does it, you know, how is it, how is instantiated in the brain? So this is something I got into early on.
- [63:48]
B
So yeah, can you explain?
- [63:49]
A
Let's talk about empathy. Absolutely. So in the brain you have, in the frontal structures, specifically the medial, you have what's called, people call the mirror neuron systems or perceptual action systems. You have them also in the region called the tpj, which is here. So this part of the brain is kind of like a multi multimedia studio. Meaning whenever I walk about, you know, let's say I walk about here in Julianne studio, I move my body from A to B. This is all my TPJ firing away the neurons in the tpj. Okay, so the TPJ region, text information. I'm going to be a little bit technical, but I get to the punchline, I promise. So the TPJ takes information from the world. So vision, touch, proprioception, meaning sense of your body and integrates that and create a sense of a self, a sense of a Julian, a sense of a baland. Okay, that's in the tpj.
- [64:38]
B
Okay.
- [64:38]
A
A sensory integration hub, sensory input, integrate that. Next to it, you have something called the superior parietal lobule. This is a region involved in a sense of body image as well. Sense of creating you. These regions, if you have. If I stimulated, for example, using a magnet, you literally feel like you're floating out there. So you create a ghost. So you're out there in space. You're looking at yourself. You know, there's a. There's a ghost. There's a different person out there. So this region is involved in self, other distinction. Meaning I know I am me. I know that you are you. And these. This bridge won't collapse. There's a clear barrier. If I zap that region, I may feel like we're merging. So that boundary between self other erodes. That's that region. The SPL and the temporal parietal junction. Tpj. Okay, fancy name, but forgive me, I'll get. I get to the. I get to the whole punchline here. Then you have the frontal lobes, the prefrontal as well. Also involved in sense of self and sense of me, but also empathy. What is Julian thinking right now? What is his agenda? What is he up to? Right? This has huge survival value. If I'm running around in the savannah and I'm somebody's chasing with me with or holding a spear, is this a friend or a foe? Is this trying to kill me? How do I escape him? Well, all in the frontal lobes, plus the tbj. So this tells us that these regions are involved in creating sense of self empathy. Looking at the world from another person's perspective. When we talk about empathy in science, there's typically two forms of empathy. There's cognitive empathy and there's affective or emotional empathy. Two types of empathy. Cognitive is. I can kind of figure out what Julian is thinking right now. And I have intellectual insight into your mind. Okay. Is he telling me the truth? Is he, you know, being deceptive? Is he trying to do this or that? That's cognitive empathy. Psychopaths have tons of cognitive empathy. Okay? They have. They're very good at this. They can read your mind. Very well, then you have emotional empathy that's actually feeling what you are feeling, experiencing your emotions as if they were my own. Okay? Psychopaths have zero of this. They have no emotional empathy. That's why they can deceive you, manipulate you, be very Machiavellian. They can read your mind, but they have no actual empathy for your emotions. The flip side of this is autism. Autistic individuals have tons of emotional empathy. Okay? They can feel your pain when you do like this and you poke your hand with a needle. They will feel that. But when they're trying to decipher what's in your mind, they can't really do that. That's why they don't lie themselves and don't understand why people will lie because they don't have much cognitive empathy, meaning they don't have insights into the other person's mind. So this is empathy, cognitive and affective. Now, getting to the whole thing here, I wanted to explore empathy more, right? I wanted to explore, first of all, is there a way to break down the barrier between self and other while we are awake? So Ramachandran and I did some experiments, and we used people with ocd, people with obsessive compulsive disorder. These are people who wash their hands and cleanse their hands for 10 hours a day, let's say. And we thought, what if somebody with OCD merely watches somebody else touching something contaminated? How would they react? Would they feel that contamination as their own? Okay, so, Julian, can you touch something disgusting over there? Like, you know, fake vomit? So you touch it over there. Just imagine. Imagine this fake. Okay, all right, so I watch you.
- [68:24]
B
Like, reaching for my ass.
- [68:26]
A
Don't become literal on me here, all right? You touch something contaminated over there, it turns out I have ocd. I will feel contaminated in my hands merely by watching you touch that contaminant. There's a first discovery. Okay. Second. Now you touch it again. You touch the table like this. I wash my hands. Okay. And you watch me wash my hands. Well, actually, let's do the. I'm the one with ocd. So I touch the contaminant and you wash your hands. And I watch you wash your hands. And whenever I watch you wash your hands, I will go, oh, Julian, wash your hands more between the fingers. Oh, Julian, use some more soap. Oh, Julian, scrap this part off. Why? Because I start feeling your emotions and sensations as if they were mine. This was actually interesting discovery because it shows us that emotions and sensations can be experienced vicariously through somebody else's lens. And Then they can override cognitive barriers and cognitive logic. Like, I know that you are you and I am me, yet I feel disgusted when you touch it and I feel relief when you wash your hands. This is very interesting.
- [69:36]
B
So, yeah, I have a little bit of that.
- [69:38]
A
Yeah, so this is this. And later we did some, some studies using, using smartphones and we found that people with OCD when they go around in, in the world and they watch a video of themselves washing their hands, so they watched a video not actually doing it, tapping into that empathy system of watching a virtual version of themselves. And that will reduce OCD by about, you know, 20% overall.
- [70:04]
B
How do you measure that?
- [70:06]
A
Typically self report. So they will report their OCD symptoms and, and so forth. So this, these studies were done in people with subclinical ocd, meaning people with not, not the full scale ocd, but with OCD symptoms. And some of the studies were done with actual patients. So it was a bit, bit varied. But overall it was very interesting. It really shows us that you can, you can really transfer emotions and sensations to other people. That's really possible. Yeah.
- [70:33]
B
That's crazy because OCD is one. And, and you can say this about a lot of different, it seems like a lot of different disorders that emanate from the brain, whatever they may be. OCD is one that has a real spectrum to it.
- [70:46]
A
It. Yeah.
- [70:46]
B
You know, like certain people will have it manifest in ways that are completely, almost seemingly unrelated. Just like when you look even at autism, you know, you can have someone all the way from non verbal autistic who actually may be really, really smart to someone who's like very high functioning and just kind of has Asperger's or something like that. It's, it's like kind of strange how that works. But did you find, like, how did you get to OCD from studying sleep? Was there, was there something, was there some sort of like related strand there? Like a thing that made you go, wait a second, you know.
- [71:22]
A
No, I, I mean my, my research and my interest have always been various things. So I have, you know, I've done sleep paralysis research obviously, and I've done OCD research, but I think these strands of research has just gained more attention. That's why I'm, I'm perhaps a bit more known for them, but it's not like I haven't. So I've done other research too. So anxiety, depression. We did a study on metaphor blindness. We found that people, some people in the populations who are, you know, in the general population or Otherwise, Otherwise healthy. They. They can't understand metaphors. For example, they literally will, you say, not all that glitters is gold. And they will say, what does that mean? You know, you tell them, Shakespeare poem, you know, shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You know, and they understand nothing. They all take it all literally. You know, you are more temperate and more beautiful. They won't understand it. They think it's a summer's day. They don't understand that this is a guy who's Shakespeare writing a poem for his lover, for example. And so it shows us that there are regions of the brain involved in understanding and, and making sense of metaphors. For example, that's a region called the angular gyrus in the left and right side. You have centers for that. And so those are interest of mine that I have. And so, yeah, I have broad interest, but I think the OCD research just got a little more attention, I think. But yeah.
- [72:50]
B
So do you think through some of your research there are ways you can translate this to some sort of. Of solution that can help treat this and reduce people's OCD significantly or get rid of it, depending on who they are?
- [73:04]
A
100%. Yeah, definitely. So let's take another example. There's something called the rubber hand illusion.
- [73:10]
B
Yes.
- [73:12]
A
I have my hand right here, and this is my left hand and my right hand is here. I put it underneath her table. Underneath the table. And a separate person comes over here and he strokes and taps the table in front of me. Go, stroke, stroke, tap, tap, tap, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, tap, tap, tap. And the person does the same stroking and tapping on my right hand underneath the table. He'll go, stroke, stroke, tap, tap, tap, tap, stroke, stroke. So the feeling I'm getting in my right hand is identical with the visual presentation I'm seeing on the table. Does that make sense?
- [73:46]
B
Yes.
- [73:47]
A
In about few minutes of the person doing this, Baland would literally feel touch sensations arising from the table. As if this table is now part of me.
- [73:56]
B
Like in.
- [73:57]
A
On the other hand, literally this, this table will feel like this hand that's hidden.
- [74:01]
B
Even if someone's not tapping it, somebody must tap it.
- [74:04]
A
So I must have tactile stimulation. I must feel some stroking and tapping. That's identical with the stroking and tapping I'm seeing on the table.
- [74:15]
B
And you feel the.
- [74:17]
A
In other words, I feel.
- [74:17]
B
Lost me a little bit. And you feel the table.
- [74:20]
A
I feel the table. So in other words, I'm feeling a stroking and tapping on my hand. Right. But my hand, I'm actually Not so I'm not seeing it, it's hidden, but I'm just feeling it.
- [74:30]
B
Yes.
- [74:30]
A
Yet I'm seeing the same sequence of stroking and tapping on the table. So the stroking and tapping that I'm feeling, I'm seeing that on. Because the person, he's doing both, you understand?
- [74:43]
B
Yes.
- [74:44]
A
He's doing both the stroking and tapping at the same time. So it's synchronized.
- [74:48]
B
Yes.
- [74:48]
A
So it's like stroking and tapping. He's doing like this underneath the table and then on the table as well. He's doing like this. So what I'm seeing, what I'm feeling on my hand looks identical with the pattern that I'm seeing on the table. So your brain goes, what is the statistical likelihood of me feeling this bizarre, you know, random pattern on my hand and seeing that random pattern on this table in front of me? And the chances are in nature 0. Therefore, this table is me. And literally, if I then scan the brain, I will literally feel, you will see that the body image centers of the brain, the centers involved in creating a sense of body image, they will light up whenever you touch the table. Let's say you go and you bring a hammer and do like this to the table. Your pain centers will flare up as if your hand was afflicted with pain.
- [75:41]
B
Yeah, I've seen, I've seen those experiments. It's reminding me of it, where someone puts their hand here and a fake hand. There's a wall and then a fake hand is put here and someone takes like a hammer and is hitting the hand and the person starts to flinch on the exact face.
- [76:00]
A
It's the same experiment. Yes, but this experiment can just be. There's very variations to it. So the original experiment exactly is what you're saying. There was a wall, little cardboard wall, and then you have like a rubber hand right here.
- [76:14]
B
Yeah.
- [76:14]
A
And then the person's real hand is out here. Okay. And so the stroking and tapping is occurring on the real hand and he is seeing it on the rubber hand. So it's identical. You know, in fact, you can, even if I, if somebody comes and strokes and tabs my back of my head, okay. And I'm see, I'm stroking and I'm seeing a stroking and tapping on another person's head in front of me. I'll feel like his back of his head is my back of my head. So it does, it doesn't have to be a table or a rubber hand. The, the point is tactile sensations coupled with a visual presentations that identical, that will expand your Body image. All right, now, coming to ocd, I thought one day I was driving on the freeway in California. I'd just been in Ramachandran's lab. Rama's lab had tons of fun. I thought, well, look, why not help people with OCD using this trick? Why is that important? Well, 50% of people with OCD will not go to therapy because they literally fear contaminants. So you're bringing them into the clinic and you say, julian, let's imagine Julian has ocd. I say, julian, touch this nasty thing right here. Here I have a shoe, the bottom of a shoe. Touch it and they will not go near it. And that's the way you treat ocd. You have to. You confront what you fear.
- [77:33]
B
Yes.
- [77:34]
A
And touch the anxiety provoking stimuli. 50% of people with OCD drop out. About 25% will not start because of fear and so forth. There's all these stats showing that it's a huge barrier, the fear component. Now then Balando is thinking, what about, what if I use a rubber hand instead? So I bring in Joe with OCD and I use a rubber hand and I stroke and tap the rubber hand in front of Joe, and I do the rubber hand experiment, and so he feels like the rubber hand is his after five minutes and then I contaminate the rubber hand. Okay. In theory, if he gets contaminated in the rubber hand, he will get the anxiety exposure that he needs for healing. Okay. Because he will feel like the rubber hand is his. But at the same time, I can trick him. I can say, look, oh, Joe, come to the clinic and don't worry, we won't actually contaminate your real hand. We'll just contaminate a rubber hand so he feels more safe, you see, he feels less exposed to contaminants. And we said, so we did this experiment and it turned out that they actually feel contaminated in the rubber hand. When we do the stroking and tapping, they will feel like their own hand is contaminated by using a rubber hand. So it's like a bridge.
- [78:47]
B
So how can you use, obviously the extensive findings of an experiment like that to help solve that problem without it being just the. You have to face it head on in therapy, like, correct. But also not being like an ssri. Not that it would be an ssri, but you know what I mean? Something where it's just throw a pill at it.
- [79:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. Well, it's. It's a way to get around these psychological, psychological barriers. Right? So if the barrier is fear and anxiety and I can trick you by using a rubber hand instead of a real hand and convince you, well, this is not as terrifying as a real hand, but your brain is getting the memo. Your brain is actually becoming more versatile and able to tackle, you know, anxiety and discuss situations more in a, more in a, more in a better way than we have. We would have solved the problems is using a rubber hand. So this is some of the work that we've been doing and, and feel like could potentially help people with ocd.
- [79:47]
B
That's amazing.
- [79:48]
A
Yeah, I think so. Thank you, brother. I feel like it's, it's, it's, it's good stuff.
- [79:53]
B
And you've written a lot of papers on this explaining the, the experiment and the findings and all that. Yeah. You know, a little side note, we all talk about peer review and stuff like that all the time. When you go to write the write up for the rubber hand experiment, whenever that was, what year?
- [80:10]
A
Approximately 2014, I think.
- [80:12]
B
Okay, yeah. What's the process there like? I, I feel like we just take this for granted all the time. How does it actually work? Who, how does the peer review process work such that, that gets published and where does it get published? So it's like, okay, that's a respected scientific paper, right.
- [80:27]
A
Well, it's a very long process. Right. And this is one of the things of science, one of the annoying things, to be honest. Do the experiments collect, collect data? You have the data, then you analyze the data, this matrix. Three to six months, depending on how fast you are. Then you have to write it up. You, let's say you have one of the research assistants write it up. I used to write tons of papers myself. Then you have it and then you submit it to a journal. Often what you see is about five or ten journals will reject the paper. This is common. So five or ten journals reject it. So this takes another six months to a year. And then finally it gets into one. One journal says, okay, we'll have a look at it, be sent to three or four experts in the field. They will read the paper and criticize it heavily. Like literally just tarnish the paper. Just go like, this is bad. Why did you use this, you know, person? Why did you use this control experiment? Why did you use this brush instead of that brush? Literally, they are the most OCD anal annoying people on earth. Okay? And they will just, their job is to just, just kill your paper.
- [81:32]
B
Like I'm trying to fix you.
- [81:34]
A
They're trying to just destroy your paper. And the funny thing, they're anonymous. So you can't see who they are, so they become even more nasty.
- [81:41]
B
Oh, that sucks.
- [81:42]
A
So that's how it works. And then you get all the feedback and then most of the time, as I said, it's a rejection, but sometimes it's not a rejection, it's just like, like this much work. Right. It's just like hours of months of having to work on the, on the experiment, maybe do new experiments, add new angle to the experiments and then fix your paper, send it into them and then another three or six months, you might be lucky, and then you get it published. So it's a very lengthy and tedious process.
- [82:11]
B
How would you improve that system? And the reason I ask it like that is because it seems like it perhaps unintentionally has become a bit of an ivory tower system where it's like you're within academia or within our research, or you're not. And if you're in, you need to abide by our standards. And if those standards aren't perfectly met, we don't care if you're the next Einstein. It's not getting published and no one's going to recognize it. That's problematic. At the same time, the idea of having a system of checks and balances to try to arrive at truth scientifically is something that you should have. Like how would you kind of bridge that gap to make it middle ground and allow science to evolve and test things, but also not, you know, just have it be random being thrown out there all the time, that's complete, that just causes noise, you know what I mean?
- [83:06]
A
Yeah. I think that some of the factors might be things like, you know, science is a very, it's poorly funded. So literally I get, maybe I used to get. Now I've rejected so many these guys who send me emails to review papers. I always just ignore these emails. My colleagues shouldn't hear this, but I am. So they send you all these invitations and you have to sit there for free and review papers for hours and hours. So they, they could start with paying some of these scientists good money. They might be less, you know, less, less annoyed and less negative if they got some. Yeah, you know, I think that's one of the things. So it takes so long because the scientists won't review the papers. They may take a month to review it if there was a faster process where it's send in, there's some money. So it could just make the system flow a bit faster. I think the key point, I think obviously you have to do the experiments, it has to be Rigorous and all that. But the scientific system is very broken financially. That's, I feel like that's the biggest barrier. And this not only comes through peer review, but even things like when I, you know, at Harvard or Cambridge, I saw some of the smartest people in the world. Smartest people, literally geniuses in the, some sometimes in the literal sense, like out of this world, you know, and they would sit there and write emails all day and do all this bureaucratic work because the university was so slow and they have to do all this paperwork and they have to sit there and reply to this and so nonsense. I mean, if you have somebody who's at that level, you should have him just produce science and gain Nobel prizes. That can help people and transform our world. They shouldn't sit there and do all this, send all these emails. It makes no sense. And that's, that's, that's a huge problem in that system. That's why I'm really, to be honest, I'm very, I'm very. There's a lot of things about current academia that really turns me off. I know my colleagues won't like it and I'm part of that system. But, but it's that for a huge, having seen that for a very long time, it's very hard to escape. In business, it's very different. It's because it's fueled by money. You can have Elon Musk just coming up with ideas every day and creating all these brain things for the brain and all that neural link and all that and it just flies off because you have money and you just get the right people to work on the most interesting problems, but in a very fast manner, efficient manner.
- [85:38]
B
Yeah. You've also been in this country now during what I would describe as really the entire genesis of, you know, almost like a little bit of a down cycle within academia where you see some trends come in that are frankly anti intellectual. You see politics infesting campuses where it's supposed to be debate. You see bureaucracy taking control of things where as you're laying out right now, that shouldn't be the case. You should let genius minds work and try to find new things. I think things will swing back at some point here. That said, I do think it's really great that guys like you who study things extensively and are doing research now have the outlet to do this and go public. Whether it be you teach into Peterson Academy or coming on shows like mine and discussing the things in popularizing kind of way to explain it to everyone. The common man like Me and, and everyone listening. It also allows you to get a profile which gives you perhaps some financial backing to be able to do your research and, and attract other, you know, like minded people who are passionate about the research and kind of go around the system in a good way. Right. Like it seems like there's a really good opportunity now for that. That.
- [87:01]
A
Yeah, definitely. That's definitely one of the positive changes, you know, having seen, having, having compared, having been able to comparing these two worlds. Right. Of, of academia and traditional grant. So you have to sit down and write grants for six months and then it get reject rejected 10 times and then get some money versus you go do something that's in. More in the we talked about before in the influencer realm. You do something small and you just get tons of money and you feel like, my God, you know, why even waste my time, right? You create your own destiny, a little destiny. Life is, you know, definitely things are changing, things are evolving and you have to, you know, be dynamic and flexible.
- [87:43]
B
Yeah, sure. But also when you have a good skill of communicating, like you take advantage of it. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's a big thing because you'll see I've seen it both ways. I've seen scientists who are brilliant, they're just not like great talkers or bringing it down to the level of the average man being able to understand. And you know, they're gonna rely more on the behind the scenes stuff and I get that. But then when you have guys who can kind of make it digestible and be passionate about it and make it fun, you know, it also does a lot for society too.
- [88:15]
A
Does it? Does a lot. Yeah. No, I agree. And look beside that, like, I feel like something that I really love is, is, is science. And I love explaining science as well. So it's a passion of mine. Talking about science and talking about scientific ideas is really something that I love. So. And really during my entire career when you, when I speak to young students and I see their face light up when you tell them about the brain or it's, you know, it's just very rewarding. So of course it is.
- [88:42]
B
Of course. Now you again, this whole journey starts with your own sleep paralysis and everything like that. Now I, as far as I know, I've never experienced that but before. But to go back, just to review, because you explained it at the very beginning, the first time that you had it as a teenager, you felt like you were awake but your whole body couldn't move. You're calling out to your parents, trying to get help. And then you see like a monster in the corner and it comes over to you and it's like pressing down on you. So the connotation is that you are still technically asleep, but you are. You feel like you're woken up in the very room that you're in. Is that fair to say?
- [89:16]
A
That is fair to say.
- [89:17]
B
Okay.
- [89:17]
A
And that's exactly what's happening in the brain. Exactly what's happening.
- [89:20]
B
So the brain has created this illusion that you're awake.
- [89:23]
A
You're not exactly. So in the brain, what you have is you have two systems, the sensory systems, which are out here, the outer layer of the brain, it's called the perceptual cortex. Out here, that part of the brain.
- [89:36]
B
Just keep this pointed to you. Sorry.
- [89:38]
A
Yeah. This part of the brain is involved in sensory perception of the world. Okay. And so that part literally turns on even though you are still in REM sleeping. So sleep paralysis is a REM phenomenon. It's a rapid eye movement sleep phenomenon. And as we mentioned, during REM sleep, during rem, you have vivid and lifelike dreams. Right, you said that. And so sleep paralysis emerges out of rem. It comes out of rem. So it's a REM phenomenon. And literally what it is is that. That your brain remains stuck in rem. Right. So it's in rem. It's stuck in the rem. So it has all the physiological features of rem. It has the paralysis, it has the. You can't move. Your eyes are moving from side to side, which is also a REM thing. It's a REM sim system. And you might ask, by the way, Julian might ask, well, well, if you're paralyzed, you can't move or speak, how come your eyes are moving? What's that about? And I'll just tell you this is a different circuit in the brain. Simple answer. There's a different circuit for your eyes. That's why you can move your eyes.
- [90:43]
B
Yeah. They're wired directly into it.
- [90:45]
A
Yeah. You can put it that way. You can put it that way.
- [90:47]
B
He's like, no.
- [90:49]
A
Now, sometimes what can happen is that when you are in rem, your perceptual systems can go, oh, I'm gonna wake up right now. Even though you are in rem, so it's almost like a. You switch, a button, like a turning on and off switch gets stuck between on and off. Like it turns on perceptually so you can see your surroundings. You become aware of yourself. Your eyelids can move, but you're still stuck in the paralysis of rem. The REM is that the REM stage of sleep and the paralysis part remains. So there's a decoupling of these two systems, the paralysis system and the perceptual system. So that's what REM sleep is all about. But also you have a lot of the features of dream sleep and REM sleep as well. So let me go into that. I think that's will be interesting.
- [91:31]
B
So this is very interesting. Interesting.
- [91:32]
A
So now when you are in rem, you're dreaming. Take the dream world. When you are in dreams, are dreams bizarre, strange, illogical?
- [91:40]
B
Yes.
- [91:40]
A
Why is that the case? I'll tell you.
- [91:45]
B
I mean, I've always described him as just. But I'm using the word so it's a cop out. I've always described it as like fever dreams, right? Where you can take a movie character and suddenly like he's also. He's still that character, but he's your buddy now that you grew up with and you're driving in a taxi somewhere. It has nothing to do with the plot, you know.
- [92:01]
A
Well, well put. Well put. Exactly. And the reason is simple. In the brain right here, you know, it's called a DLPFC2 on the prefrontal region, these parts of the brain, this part shuts down during rem. The logical serial thinking part of the brain shuts down. And so that's why my sense of logic and agency and cohese building cohesive stories out of the window. Literally. Because a part of the brain that has to do with serial and logical and cohesive thinking shuts down during rem. Literally. That is the simple explanation for why dreams are strange and bizarre. That's the first explanation.
- [92:38]
B
So it totally shuts down. So you can't distinguish between logical and illogical.
- [92:45]
A
The world becomes strange and bizarre because your logic centers shut down.
- [92:50]
B
Is it similar? I'm sorry, I just want to ask this because I thought of it. I don't mean to break your flow, but. But is it similar to like the phenomenon of some sort of psychedelic experience, like Alice in Wonderland?
- [93:03]
A
We'll come to that.
- [93:04]
B
Okay, good.
- [93:04]
A
Thanks for the reminder. We'll get to that. Because I'd like to cover that. It's not exactly. This part is not.
- [93:09]
B
It's different.
- [93:09]
A
It's different. But the LSD experience is also part of the dream experience. I'll get to that in a second. So you have the DLPFC shutting down the world is illogical, first component. Now, sometimes Julian finds himself on a spaceship and he Flies in the space spaceship. And everything is just quickly. He's whisked up in the air and he's flying.
- [93:29]
B
Yeah.
- [93:29]
A
Why? Well, that's because behind your ears you have a vestibular system. The vestibular system is involved in sense of balance. Sense of me being here, but then I'm over here. And so this is. Allows you to create balance in the brain. The neurons in the vestibular system are overactive in rem. Simple explanation, illogical. But also your balance centers are hyperactive. So you become like this out of balance, things become pretty fleeting. Right, that's. That's one second. The emotional core of the brain, the limbic structure behind your ear, there's a limbic center called the emotional Center. It's about 30% more active in REM sleep in your dream. And because of that, dreams are highly instinctual, emotional. You are desirous of things, of emotional stuff, maybe women or whatever. That's because 30% more activity in the emotional, instinctual part of the brain. Okay, three parts. Four, the anterior cingulate and empathy part of the brain that's involved in creating other people. Hyperactive. That's why the brain is populated. The dream is populated by a lot of people. Your dreams are literally very social. Your dreams.
- [94:50]
B
Dreams are full of people, real and fake.
- [94:53]
A
Well, they're all fake in the sense that. Well, okay, I see what you're saying. Imagine versus people you met in real life.
- [94:59]
B
Yeah, I'm thinking of my dream last night.
- [95:01]
A
Gotcha. I gotcha. I understand. Well, your brain creates these mix, right? So it could be people that you think you know. Could be real people or people that you imagine. It could be both. But it's. But the key point is that it's populated by a lot of people. People, all right? Tons of people. So you have that. So the. So the theory of mind part of the brain is as hyperactive. That's another part. Let's continue. Dreams build narratives. So the hippocampus part of the brain, the memory part of the brain builds stories and takes from your memory. So it's. So it's literally people you knew from real life and weaves them into the narratives as well. So the hippocampus is there.
- [95:36]
B
Got it.
- [95:37]
A
The motor regions of the brain are active. And for that reason you are moving around in your dream. You can move. That's the motor regions.
- [95:46]
B
So it's creating the illusion that you're moving.
- [95:49]
A
Correct. So basically, in a nutshell, when I balant, I'm moving. When I'm awake, I Move my arm from A to B in space. I'm using my motor cortex on the left side. Neurons fire. I move from A to B. This is motor cortex. I close my eyes and imagine myself moving from A to B. And my motor cortex will actually fire as well. Even though I'm not moving. They'll partially fire just by imagining it. When I'm dreaming, because I'm imagining myself moving, the motor cortex fires away. Okay, so you have all these different centers of the brain being active. And that's why the dream landscape has this flavor to it. Bizarreness, strangeness, sense of agency. Agency is gone. I don't know that I'm dreaming when I'm dreaming. Why is that the case? Well, again, the DLPFC is involved in self agency. Not only logic, but also self agency. So I am, I am unaware of myself dreaming. The TPJ regions we mentioned before that is involved in self body image shuts down. This region shuts down. And for that reason you feel like you're here, but then suddenly you occupy somebody else's body. Or you might feel yourself in a bird's body, or you see yourself from the outside like a Netflix movie. Why is that the case? Well, your self, sense of self and body image becomes fluid. That's a TPJ shutting down. You literally have your brain chemistry and your brain milieu dictating what you see in your dream. Now if I beland Julian is dreaming and his brain is firing in this bizarre pattern and he's seeing a certain dream because of that. And then I come in and I fire some light over here and I put some fire and the smoke will overwhelms you, right in your dream. Now you will incorporate that smoke into your dream as well. So you'll see yourself in a high house where it's like there's fire and you're trying to escape. So we can externally affect the dream as well. So not only your internal brain environment, also the external environment can affect the dream content. So these are very crucial points. The final point, I don't want to go to ramble too much, but a final point, this is great. A final point on this is that you may notice and I've had this dream a ton and a lot of people tell me they have these dreams is that the dream that you're trying to walk but you can't. You feel like your hand, your legs are heavy. Joey is your legs are heavy and the monster is chasing you. You, you're trying to get away, but you can't. You're like, I'm stuck. What's going on there? This is simply your motor cortex firing. So you're moving, but at the same time, in the brain stem, the lower part of the brain, there's a structure that's in that's called a central motor generator. Central motor generator. If the neurons there will go to the cortical regions and the outer layer of the brain and compete with the motor cortex. So if the central motor generator in the lower part of the brain is involved in automatic movements and the outer layer is involved in actual voluntary movements, the automatic center will sometimes, because it fires sporadically, like, it will overwhelm. It's over. It will overwhelm the motor cortex. And for that reason, even though you feel like you can move, but then suddenly you felt you cannot move. Okay. Understand? Yeah. It's a very crucial point, actually, that explains why dreams feel so fleeting and you feel like you have control one minute, but then the other minute you don't have control.
- [99:26]
B
Yes.
- [99:26]
A
And it has to do with the fact that you have tons of neurons in the lower part of the brain overwhelming the more voluntary cortical regions.
- [99:33]
B
It's like they're competing with each other.
- [99:34]
A
They're competing, and the lower parts are more aggressive. And when they fire sporadically, suddenly they will overwhelm it. So if you are walking and you feel like you have control, suddenly you don't have control. And that's the automatic regions out, competing out, wrestling these outer layers. And then you might add, before you go, then you might add, well, what's the mantra all about? The mantra is literally a physical representation of your limbic emotional fear centers being 30% more active. So it manifests as a monster chasing you.
- [100:06]
B
So it's like if I were watching, if I had the activity monitor open on my computer and I were watching all the different places it was using the unified memory in, these are all the places it's capable of using it. But depending on what I have Open, Chrome, Spotify, YouTube, which would be in Chrome, Adobe, Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, and depending on what I'm actively using, some levels are going to be more meaning. They're going to take a bigger piece of the piece. If I'm understanding correctly, this is what's happening with different centers of your brain during a dream. You just don't control what's open and what's not.
- [100:41]
A
That's a beautiful metaphor. It's a beautiful metaphor.
- [100:44]
B
Thank you. Look at that.
- [100:45]
A
No, I love it. I love it.
- [100:46]
B
I'm not retarded. Joe.
- [100:48]
A
He's like no, you still might think. Look, Julian, what I'm trying to say. And you've put it very nicely in that way. Your brain is set on a certain. There are certain parameters with this part being slowed down, this part being slowed down, this part being overactive, creating a. The way your brain will express based on that, literally. I can give you another example. As you know, I'll be teaching a course on love at the Peterson Academy in a few days. And so when you are in love, for example, let's. Analogy to the dream state. When you fall in love, your prefrontal cortex will shut down. Your logical part of the brain will shut down. Yeah, serotonin will go down. I'm talking about the infatuation stage. So serotonin, which is involved in well being will go away. You will have. When serotonin goes down, you become ocd. You start obsessing all the time. Okay? When you fall in love, dopamine goes up. You become like a cocaine, cocaine head. You become like a crackhead. Okay? I'm serious.
- [101:50]
B
I understand exactly what you mean.
- [101:52]
A
You have tons of dopamine, all right? The TPJ region of the brain that has to do with empathy. And like the psychopath, like trying to understand other person's mind becomes hyperactive because you're always trying to figure out what you're. The girl is or you know, girl is thinking right now. So that becomes hyperactive. Okay? Cortisol goes up just like Julian when he's stressed. When in the infatuation stage of love, cortisol is through the roof. That's why you can't stay there for a very long time, three to six months. You have to either break up up or become a stable couple. Otherwise you'll just wear yourself out, literally. What I'm trying to say is that the dream state, or whether you are on cocaine or whether you are newly in love, the brain has a way of organizing itself. And your behavioral output will reflect that. Your, the mental activity will reflect exactly how that the brain is set in that. In that. The default state of that situation.
- [102:47]
B
That's perfectly explained.
- [102:49]
A
Cool.
- [102:49]
B
Joe, we're watching a superstar being born today. I don't know if you haven't picked up on that. I know you have, but I. I think, I think you're gonna have a future on a lot of screens around here. But the way you explain things is really amazing. And it also like everyone out there, this. These are human experiences, right? We all dream. We all can think of it like from our perspective and be like, oh, maybe that's why this or that. But one of the things I keep on thinking about while you're going through all the different parts of the brain that are, are working for and against each other in some ways to create a dream is the fleeting nature of those dreams. And what I mean by that is I will dream vividly and know that I dream vividly.
- [103:28]
A
Yeah.
- [103:30]
B
I will usually remember most of the dream the second I wake up at 6:15 in the morning. But there are some days where by 6:21, I don't remember any of it.
- [103:42]
A
It. Yeah.
- [103:43]
B
And some days at 6:21 I remember all of it. And I remember it days later and months later and years later, like last night's dream. I can tell you play by play what happened. The dream I had like three nights ago, I remember is crazy. I couldn't even tell you where it was or who was in it.
- [103:58]
A
Right?
- [103:59]
B
Why is that? Why, why do we have like selective memory?
- [104:02]
A
It's a good dream. It's a good point. So I always make it a point to emphasize that we. The whole night, right? So you have, have eight hours of sleep. Julian has six or seven. Most of us have eight.
- [104:14]
B
I do seven or eight.
- [104:15]
A
Now seven does. Good, let's seven hours, right. And that whole sleep architecture, one third is in rem. In rem you have dreams whether you remember them or not. You actually dream the entire night. Entire REM stages dream. In fact, in the other stages of sleep, you also have some fragment fragments of dreams. Dreams have less of a story plot, they are less cohesive, they are less story like. But there are still some dreams in the other stages. So you have tons of opportunities to dream. Now Julian is asking then how come I don't remember my dreams, right? Why do I have a few dreams that I do remember? And the reason is this. Remember I told you that serotonin shuts off? Remember I told that?
- [104:58]
B
Yes.
- [104:58]
A
Serotonin goes down during rem and noradrenaline also goes down, down during rem. That's why we have, why we are. Things are spacey and all that. That's, that's in, that's the rem. That's the, that's a REM phenomenon. So these two chemicals go down. And because serotonin and noradrenaline shuts down in REM sleep, you need those chemicals in order to take memories from the hippocampus, the memory part of the brain, and place it in the, in the cortex to store the memories. In other words, you have the memories, but they're not stored. The brain, because of these two chemicals being absent, it's much more output fixated than input. Fixated, meaning input. It doesn't create. It doesn't store new memories, but it just builds stories all the part. It's output generated, it's output fixed. And the reason for that is also there's another chemical, and I'm throwing chemicals at you, but it's important, and it's very simple, actually. There's a chemical called acetylcholine in the lower part of the brain that fires up the brain. So it's always in the business of creating new stories, news stories, new stories, but never because of that hippocampal region being deactivated and not deactivated, but lacking these chemicals to store them. Does that make sense?
- [106:12]
B
Yes.
- [106:12]
A
It's basically that. That's it. The hippocampus can't store new memories in the same manner.
- [106:17]
B
But sometimes it kids, sometimes it fires in a way that it does.
- [106:20]
A
And this is really it. This is then when you wake up. And this is the crucial point of all this. When you wake up, the wakefulness process itself entails a surge of serotonin and noradrenaline flooding your brain. That's why, when you actually wake up, the dreams you do remember are the last few minutes of the dreams you just had. You don't remember the whole ren thing. That's actually what you remember are only the last few minutes of the dream.
- [106:47]
B
I mean, the one last night was so detailed, so many. That's only a few minutes.
- [106:51]
A
Well, we'll get into that, too. Why dreams feel so expanded. Let's get into that.
- [106:55]
B
Yeah, please. I'm talking. This was like.
- [106:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, it feels a long time.
- [106:59]
B
Yeah, it's a full movie.
- [107:00]
A
That's a full movie. So just to conclude on this, the reason why you can't remember your dreams is because serotonin and noradrenaline, the chemicals helping your hippocampus store them, are absent. That's the whole story. And then when you wake up and you jolt awake, you remember your dreams because serotonin and noradrenaline comes online. Brain. That's a simple story for that. Then Julian says, well, look, I felt like hours, like Inception. It feels like, you know, years.
- [107:26]
B
Yeah.
- [107:27]
A
It turns out when you record the neurons of a rat as it's running through a maze. So it's running through a maze, and you record their neurons in the. In a region called the hippocampus. We talked about the memory part. The fire neurons go. Then the Mice are awake, and you look at their neurons again, and it turns out the same neurons will fire when they are awake as when they were dreaming. So, okay, so when, sorry, this is. Let me get this right. The neurons of the hippocampus of the, of the mice firing a certain pattern when they're asleep, and the same neurons fire when they are awake.
- [108:12]
B
Okay.
- [108:12]
A
There's a replay of neuronal firing. It's like the same. It's like this. They're doing the same thing. Okay, I'm mirroring now. You go. Here's the, here's the interesting part. So the, the neurons not only fire when they are awake, but they also. They fire about 50% slower. Okay, 50% slower when they are in REM. Does that make sense? Yes. So when they are awake, the neurons fire fast. When they are asleep, the neurons fire slow, about 50% slower. So this might explain why when I am sleeping on a couch and I, I'm sleeping and then I. It's. I feel like it's been two hours, and I wake up and look at the clock and it's been like two minutes. It's been like two minutes. The reason for that is potentially that the neurons in my brain fired 25 to 50% slower when I was in REM2.
- [109:04]
B
And it's not perfect math. It doesn't mean that because it was two minutes, therefore, in your brain, it's now four. Four minutes. It could be like two hours. It's. It's distorted. It's distorted essentially because it's not. The percentage isn't related to the percentage of time. It's related to the percentage of like, activity. Therefore, some of that activity being reduced means that your perception's gone.
- [109:23]
A
Correct. And to be honest, we don't really know this, how this works out in humans. We have not. We don't have a real story for that. It's hard to really do these experiments in humans. We don't. Can't really crack open the skull and record the neurons in the same way as we can. We can in rats.
- [109:38]
B
Right.
- [109:39]
A
But, you know, it's a good indicator, the fact that we know that, you know, rats, the neurons are slowed down by 50%, the same neurons when they are in REM. But let me tell you a different experiment that I wanted to do with Ramachandran. So Ramachandran and I wanted to do an experiment on exactly. Sleep on time perception in dreams. And this was a experiment we came up with, and I took it to Alan Hobson, one of the greatest dream, sleep. Dream Researchers of the last hundred years. Not to brag or anything. I knew him a little bit. Okay. To brag, you got clout.
- [110:10]
B
It's cool.
- [110:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. So I took it to him. I said, look, this experiment here, what do you think about this? We have a guy, let's call him Joe. Joe is sleeping. And as Joe is sleeping, I will ascertain, using neural recordings, EEGs in his brain. EEG is like a net, like, thing on the brain. You record the activity of the brain and you kind of can figure out whether the person is in rem. You can record facial muscles and all that as well to see if he's paralyzed and in rem. So you do that. You know, he's in REM sleep. And once he's in REM dreaming away, Baland will come in and I will sprinkle water on Joe sleeping. I'll go. And then here, this is what I'll do. I will wake up Joe up instantly. I'll go wake him up. Wake up Joe. Okay, like a few seconds. Maybe wait a few seconds and then wake him up, wake him up. The question is, will Joe? If I asked Joe, what did you dream about? Would he go, A. This is the first scenario. I was walking in New Jersey. I saw the clouds come out. You know, it became darker. I took out my umbrella and it started to rain slowly. But I also just called my mom telling her to. Also, you know, it's, mom, it's raining. You know, remember that. You know, remember the umbrella as well. And I had so long story. He can. The person builds a long story around that. That's the first scenario. Scenario B is the following. I wake Joe up and I ask him about his dream and he'll go, oh, I was just walking and suddenly I was hit by a tsunami. I was just hit by tsunami. I woke up. Okay, These are the two. These are the only two possibilities. The question is, which one is correct? The first one would imply that dreams are heavily slowed down compared to real life. Because, remember, I put water. Water on him and woke him up after, like, second. Like a second or two. Right? The second one. The second one, he's just like, oh, I just. I was hit by. By, you know, water, like a tsunami. Which one is it? We don't know. And this is one of the huge. This is such a simple experiment. We haven't. We have. We don't know the answer to this experiment, but it could potentially reveal a lot of things. And. And my. And Hobson was excited about this experiment and. But we haven't done it.
- [112:39]
B
You got to do that.
- [112:39]
A
Gotta do that one.
- [112:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. Where do dreams come from?
- [112:44]
A
It's a good question. Where do dreams come from? So for a long time, people thought these were messages from God and divine realms. And to be honest, we can't really exclude anything in the sense that just because we know there's a brain chemistry and there's a brain substrate to dreams, we can't for sure know if there's something coming from outside. We can't know that. So we'll just keep that possibility open for a scientist a hundred years from now. We won't go into that, but that was the belief for a long time. So where do they come from? Let's say we don't know other than we can look at the brain chemistry and the functional activity of the brain and say your dreams are a product of this, of this, of this activity. But you can go further than that and say, well, it's not merely the activity of the brain and the neurons firing in this bizarre synchrony that's creating the dream. There's also other factor. It could be things like your, your, your, your, your unconscious memories of, of life and experiences. We know that the hippocampus, as I mentioned, is hyperactive in rem. So definitely you have a lot of activity of the hippocampus spilling over. And so you see yourself replaying some of your, your, your life experiences. In fact, dreams don't just replay real life events. They tend to be more sort of around core themes and fears and in things you're happy with, rather than just mere replay. Julian is not merely seeing himself, you know, walking around in New Jersey and eating pizza at the deli. He's not seeing that. He's seeing more of emotionally important themes.
- [114:19]
B
And symbols, even if they're changed from what reality is, even though they're changed.
- [114:24]
A
You can think of dreams more like. Dreams are more like an Indiana Jones. And you are. It's an exploratory process where your brain ticks these visual scenarios and throw them, throw them at you, at Julian and says, look, here's Julian is in a spacesuit and he's walking around in Buckingham Palace. And then see how you react to that. If there's an. If you're emotionally aroused, it will say, oh, this is important. Let's go further down this route. And you explore it a bit more. And then it takes another scenario. Maybe it introduces a colleague that just a new colleague from work. And you see her suddenly wearing a. What's not Batman? The lady in Batman, the Catwoman, she becomes Catwoman, for example, or you know.
- [115:07]
B
Something was a good Catwoman.
- [115:10]
A
Yeah, something strange and bizarre will happen. And the point of all this, your brain is literally exploring scenarios and testing them against. Against your expectations and your emotions. And if it's important, you'll go down that route more. So that's the first, that's the first element, second element. You can think of dreams as a visual. I'm trying to be like you now and use metaphors. So it's like a museum, an art museum, rather than actual verbal stuff. Meaning that it takes you and shows you these indescribable things like walking around an art museum and being aroused. And you can't really put words on what you're seeing. It's so profoundly evocative emotionally. Oh my God, I'm seeing the sun and the moon bowing in front of me. I am seeing, you know, this television splitting into becoming a rainbow and flying off. And things are indescribable. And that's because the brain, it seems, is using more the right hemisphere, which is more the art part of the brain. It recruits a lot of that, those centers for sure. And less linguistic. It uses language we do speak in dreams, but it's less linguistically describable. It's more of metaphorically abstract. That's a very crucial point actually of the whole dream experience. The fact that you have that these are like that art museum metaphor, that things are visually evocative and just profound and indescribable often, but they often.
- [116:41]
B
You know, I'm one of these guys that likes to think about the meaning of my dreams because they have these strange non linear parallels to things in my life with real people mixed with some bizarreness. Not real people as well, but the real people are in a totally different context. But then the actions they take or you take with them in the dream explains something else that's either like something you need to do in your life or something that's missing in your life.
- [117:17]
A
It's a good point. Yeah, it's almost like emotional processing. It's a way of. It's reminding. It's a reminder, but it's really one theory. Just to go back to theory land here. But it's kind of what you're saying. There's a theory called threat simulation, which is merely fancy word for saying that dreams is a way of exposing you to terrifying situations and see how you survive in them. In other words, if you go around and if you're, if you're walking in a landscape and you jump over a river and you're running away from a serial killer or sable toothed tiger or something like that and you survive that scenario. You're more likely to face situations like that in your real life and survive. The brain is never wasteful. Your brain is never redundant. Your brain doesn't want to waste energies and resources. So it's using that time to build new circuitry in the brain. Plastically rewire your brain so you don't have to go out and chase that, that, that, that you know that lion or run away from that lion. You are more, you have already have the circuits laid down while you are dreaming. So they affect effectively one view. Your, your point is, is also similarly and it's related, it's valid that you are, you're learning how to cope emotionally with other, other people. So dreams are hypersocial and one social and they're hyper emotional as well. And they tend to be more negative and negative. We have more negative social encounters in dreams. That means that's important because your brain goes look for me, Baland, to be having a chit chat with a girl in my dream is going to be less important for my survival than having this fight with a, a serial killer and escaping that. Which one is more likely to help you survive? Well, the emotional interaction with the girl can be important too. You learn skills but it's, it's skewed and biased towards more negative interaction. Because your brain is always trying to help you survive.
- [119:16]
B
Even if it's far less realistic. Like the first one with the girl could be very realistic to something you're dealing with with a girl in real life.
- [119:22]
A
That's, that is true. But the brain in dreams are, dreams are generally not very realistic. It tries to use the more extreme examples to be more evocative. That's the whole point.
- [119:31]
B
But does it use extreme examples of like symbolism? That doesn't make sense. While the examples are actually very real.
- [119:39]
A
Things, they make emotionally sense. That's the point. I think they do make emotional sense. So even though in your dreams. The thing is with dreams you can have your dream, you can be in your bedroom, you can be in this apartment here and it will feel like a, it will feel like a palace, it will be a palace, it will literally be transformed into a palace. But it still feels like your own room. You don't question it. And that's the whole point of dream. The fact that you can have this moon and the stars prostrate in front of you, but it feels normal in A dream. And that's because somehow logic is turned off, but emotion is hyperactivated, so we don't find it bizarre and abstract. And that's a key point. Emotionally, you cope with the experience and you learn from it. And so that's why. Yeah, that's why the whole. That's why we can. Even. Even though it's bizarre and strange, the whole serial killer attacking you and you're trying to run away, and by the way, the serial killer has three heads, but still, it can teach you something about emotional coping in a similar emotionally evocative scenario. On the mantra thing. I do want to point something out here.
- [120:45]
B
The mantra thing.
- [120:46]
A
The monster thing.
- [120:47]
B
Oh, monster thing.
- [120:48]
A
And the point is that. Have you noticed in your dreams, the monsters in your dreams are terrifying, but they look a certain. They look a certain way typically. They look a certain way, typically. And the way they look is that the monster has to be terrifying, but not that terrifying, that they are not on. They can't be remembered. There has to be some level of terror. But if it becomes. If it, instead of three heads, has, like, hundred heads, it wouldn't work.
- [121:14]
B
I don't. I'm not gonna say that's never happened. I'll say this. And now tonight, I'll dream about monster, but I don't really have the monster coming to my dreams ever.
- [121:25]
A
Yep.
- [121:26]
B
The only. So the only type of dream that involves, like, me running for my life from death usually involves, like, a vehicle or something like that. Like, a car is driving at me or the plane's going down. I'm like, well, and then, like, you'll wake up and you're like, you know, like, almost you were falling from the sky. But a lot of things that are like the monster are the threat of something happening.
- [121:49]
A
Yeah.
- [121:50]
B
Like, do you ever sit with people and, like, break down their dreams and, like, what. What it means?
- [121:54]
A
Yeah, I do get those. Often. People ask me often about their dreams.
- [121:58]
B
And can you figure out, like, how it taught? Like, sometimes when they're describing it, like, how it makes sense from.
- [122:04]
A
Yeah.
- [122:05]
B
A brain standpoint.
- [122:06]
A
I try to interpret it differently. I try.
- [122:08]
B
Yeah, I try because, like, I, you know, I'm not a scientist, but I'm always trying to do that because there will be some sort of theme that is the hypothetical monster. It's not a real monster, but it's like a threat in the real world. And even if sometimes it'll be called something different and it's not like a actual thing, but it's directly parallel to something that I'm like, oh, I was just talking about that with someone and what a danger that is or, or that kind of thing. As if it's almost like, man, I should hit that again. Or, you know, because I also have a show too, so I cover topics sometimes of things that are like a problem. You know, I, I don't know if. I don't know if that's, like, related to what I do. And I'm always thinking about this stuff, but it, it's. It's more of a. I describe it less like someone holding a gun to your head and more like you watching a movie of a gun to someone else's head. Head and watching it go off. It's more like that.
- [123:06]
A
Yeah.
- [123:06]
B
You know.
- [123:07]
A
No, I agree, I agree. It has that. It has that unpredictable predictability about it. And it's, it's, it's, it's. It's fleeting, but again, it's. It's the neurons firing a certain way, the chemicals being in a certain balance state and things like that. I want to. I want to also touch. Touch on the whole. You said the psychedelics and all that.
- [123:29]
B
Yeah. You're reading my mind.
- [123:30]
A
Yeah.
- [123:31]
B
You in my head right now?
- [123:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, I did.
- [123:33]
B
God damn it. Put a neuron on me or something.
- [123:36]
A
So why do dreams have this kind of bizarre, strange, eerie feel to them? Why do they kind of remind you of the psychedelic state? You might ask that. And the reason is simple. The mystical aspect of dreams and the highly sort of personalized cosmic aspect of dreams is that this is a theory, of course, but it's very plausible. I remember I talked about serotonin being shutting down in REM sleep and therefore in dreams, not being abs. Not being absent in dreams. Right? And this is. No. When serotonin overall shuts down, often what you can find is that other receptors for serotonin might go up all of a sudden. And this is a feature of the brain. You shut down one receptor or one family of neurons or chemicals, and it might find another way to come back online. So there's a receptor called a serotonin 2A receptor. Okay, fancy word for, for the ghost receptor in the brain. This is literally the ghost receptor, meaning that when you take psychedelics, when you take psilocybin, lsd, all these drugs, you will titillate and tickle these serotonin 2A receptors. And in effect, the world feels mysterious. It feels, say everything becomes salient. This water becomes salient, this becomes salient. It becomes imbued with meaning. Okay? Now in dreams, we think that because Serotonin shuts down these receptors. These serotonin 2a receptors might actually get a boost. And that might explain why dreams have this mystical overall airy qualities with them, simply for that reason. It's quite interesting. But it might explain it. It might explain it the fact that you have these serotonin 2 receptors suddenly coming alive.
- [125:35]
B
So it makes you, if I'm understanding that correctly, it makes everything feel like it has a spirit to it and like it's existing not just atoms.
- [125:43]
A
Yeah, it's again another layer to all the brain components. I told you, this is another layer. Besides things being bizarre, strange, and flying, you know, things flying all over the place, there's also a mystical and almost spiritual layer to it. And that's, that's the serotonin 2A receptor that you can also artificially take by using drugs.
- [126:00]
B
Do you think that like the ghost receptor and, and this, this concept. How do I want to ask this? I don't want to over complicate this. I want this digestible so that you can understand it and you see where I'm going here. But because we are suspended from reality when we're asleep.
- [126:21]
A
Yep.
- [126:22]
B
It's literally this thing that every organism does. Like you gotta just like go to sleep to let the body rebuild itself during time. But you, you fall, like that's how we say it, you fall asleep. Like you're falling out of reality in a way. And you are. Then the brain goes into rebuild mode. And as a part of this rebuild mode, it almost, I guess it's elevator music is the way that it fires all the different parts of the brain for you to dream and like be distracted, like, oh, look over here while we're fixing all your cells and shit like that? Is, is there any science or is there any idea you have that could link this to some sort of otherworldly or spiritual endeavor? Does that make sense? It's a little bit of a woo woo way of asking it. But is there anything that you've, even if it's not proven yet that you've been like, ooh, that could tie to that? Yeah.
- [127:18]
A
This is a very interesting and a deep question actually. So, as you know, I'm a religious person myself, a Muslim, spiritual. I believe in other realms, so. So by default I become a bit more open to other realities.
- [127:33]
B
When did, were you like that as a child too? Or did that develop later, became later with the science?
- [127:37]
A
The more scientific became, the more spiritual I became? Wow, that's actually true. I became more spiritual in my childhood. Look, I was When I was in the gang, I knew nothing about spirituality. My family is not very religious or interesting.
- [127:49]
B
So this is something that you just developed that yourself.
- [127:51]
A
It came with the whole. When I started. Started to study science and all that, that I just felt that, you know, there was more to the world than life. So this is something that I grew into. But I do think that other dimensions could exist. So consciousness, we know what consciousness. It's okay, consciousness. What is consciousness? Consciousness is something inside of you, the awareness of you, of the world. You have something called qualia. Qualia is. And I get to the question, but qualia is the sensation of. Of when I drink water. The sense of sensation of water or the redness of red or the pain of pain. That's called qualia. So it's a fascinating thing because we all have this. Okay. This is humanly very, very crucial. And then inside the brain, spirituality and. And dreams and spirituality. And the. And the brain is very hard. It's very hard to pin down. But it seems like if there is. If consciousness can be pinned down to one part of the brain, it would be the limbic center.
- [128:52]
B
The limbic center.
- [128:54]
A
Emotional core of the brain. I'll tell you why. And this is also where if I have epileptic seizures, it's called temporal lobe epilepsy. In the temporal lobe, in the emotional cord of the brain, I will literally become more religious, I become more spiritual, I become poetic. I start writing all this religious stuff and it just become like, act like a prophet. It. If I get temporal epilepsy. This is well studied. Yeah. This is a neurological disorder where the neurons in that part of the brain goes go ballistic and they fire. Okay. The temporal lobes is also. It may be part of that part of the brain where consciousness comes about, because if I stimulate it artificially using a current, I will have these vast experiences that are emotionally rich, sensorially rich. I see myself floating outside my body as well, but it's. It's. It's a very rich experience I have of. Of. Of emotion and. And. And self as well. To make this, illustrate this point, let me give you the opposite scenario. Let's say the limbic structure dials down. If the limbic structure dials down to the extent that it shuts off, you may develop Cotard syndrome.
- [130:07]
B
Cotard syndrome.
- [130:08]
A
Cotard. Cotard.
- [130:09]
B
Okay, you see? I said cotard. Everyone's talking about cotard these days.
- [130:12]
A
Cotard. Cotard. Exactly. I know what you mean. Yep.
- [130:16]
B
Plus $7,000.
- [130:18]
A
Go ahead. Right. Okay. Cotard syndrome is the following. You feel like the world is dead. There's no meaning in the world before. In a dream, everything is significant and emotionally salient. When you have Cotard syndrome, everything is dead. Everything is without meaning. There's no meaning to nothing. There's nothing. There's no meaning at all. And in fact, you may look in the mirror and say, I am dead. I'm not alive. And the doctor might say, well, what are you talking about? You're sitting here having a conversation. You say, yeah, well, I'm having a conversation, but I'm dead. You might poke him with a needle, and he bleeds. And he looks at it, he says, and the doctor might say, well, you're bleeding. Do dead men bleed? And he might say, maybe they do after all. Maybe dead men do bleed after all. Okay, so he sees himself as dead because of his limbic structures turning off. Coming to your point. Now, there's also a helmet called the God helmet. God helmet is. You put it on. It was Michael persinger in the 1990s, I think he came up with this concept, the helmet. You put it on and literally, people will feel like they are in one with God. They have spiritual experiences by stimulating the limbic core of the brain. So if there's any part of the brain where spirituality would come about, it would be in the limbic core. Where consciousness would come about as well, would be in the limbic part, the emotional part of the brain. Emotion. In fact, saying this emotional part of the brain would be a disservice because it's involved in such a vast array of human experiences. But that's what I would say. So in dreams, that part of the brain is dialed up. That's why it can feel spiritual and cosmic. But then my mentor Ramachandran once said, how do we know that God is not merely communicating with us using that limbic center? Why do we think that the limbic center is creating God, whereas it could be God communicating with that limbic center? And I think that could be true. I think that. Personally, I think that I do believe in God and spirits and all that. And so there's nothing negating the fact that God could be speaking to us through brain centers. I mean, how would he speak to us? Right? Imagine a radio, your guy, 200 years ago, and you walk in a desert, okay, in this desert. And Julian, he sees a radio.
- [132:43]
B
I'd be like, what the fuck?
- [132:45]
A
He takes it and he turns it on, and music comes out of it. Okay, what would you think? You would open it and you would maybe start breaking some Things and the music would go a little. And things would become messy. Right. But never in your mind would you have thought, well, this is radio waves coming from somewhere else, creating the music. You thought that you're messing around with the insides of the radio. It's all that's happening. So in a sense, science is Right now in this stage, we are tampering with the brain. We shut this center off, amplify this region, and we see changes. But we cannot negate the fact that other forces might communicate with us from the outside. So did that analogy make sense?
- [133:26]
B
Yes, it does. Yeah, it does. I don't think I'd open it up. I think I'd, like, back away. All afraid of it. Like, what the.
- [133:31]
A
Is that right? Right.
- [133:32]
B
It's like it. But it's also, like, impossible to simulate what you would think because I. We know that reality, like, I've. I was born with all this technology around me. So, like, if I didn't see it, would I be totally afraid of it? I would assume so. I'm not really sure.
- [133:46]
A
By the way, you'll have to use the restroom.
- [133:48]
B
Oh, sure. We'll be right back. So that term's ghost receptor. You were saying? That's like a real scientific term.
- [133:53]
A
I came up with it, actually.
- [133:54]
B
You came up with it. That's a sick term.
- [133:56]
A
One of my. What's in the title? Yeah, the title of the paper. I think it's called the Ghost Receptor in the Brain. Why we See Freddy Krueger during dream or sleep paralysis or something like that. And I published this.
- [134:08]
B
Why we see Freddy Krueger.
- [134:10]
A
Yeah, something like that. It's about run the Freddy Krueger phenomenon and why we see the hat man and all that.
- [134:14]
B
Can you explain that, the hat man thing?
- [134:16]
A
Because I just about talked.
- [134:17]
B
Talking with you about that the other day.
- [134:18]
A
Yeah, right.
- [134:20]
B
Yeah.
- [134:20]
A
So why do people see these Freddy Krueger like monsters and hat. People with hats and all that in sleep paralysis? Or these. These states that are between wakefulness and.
- [134:28]
B
Yeah.
- [134:29]
A
And dreams. And the reason, I think, is the following. When you are sleeping, first of all, you might say, why do most people just see a shadow in the corner of the room? Why a shadow? What's that about? And here I would say the following. The limbic centers of your brain emotional core. The fear centers are hyperactive. That's the fear representing, as the corner, the monster. And then what's called visual processing. The act of seeing itself is very hierarchical. It occurs in a hierarchy. So first of all, in the back of your brain, you Have a structure in the occipital lobes. Back in the brain, the visual cortex, it responds to lines and things like. And basic shapes. Basic lines and shapes. So what I think is that when you have sleep paralysis, for example, your brain says, look, I don't want to hallucinate a monster with like, with detailed face and a, like a perfect, like, you know, clothing and all that. I just want to have the basic shape. So I'll just use my visual cortex and then just think about how to get out of this room. Escape routes and all that. The reason for this, Julian, is that visual. There's one third of the cortex is for vision alone. We have 30 centers for vision. Vision is very costly. It's a very costly process to see. So your brain is always in the business of how can I see things in the world? Using the most efficient way as possible. As possible. So for the brain to just say, look, I'm just gonna visualize a shadow over there and the hell with the rest. And I can focus on other things. That's just a way to get out of it. So that's the first step. Now occasionally, then you might see the shadow moving, right? That's because we have a part of the brain called the mt. The, the, the motor, the. It's called the mt. Okay, it's not the motor, but it's called MT region. It has to do with movement.
- [136:30]
B
Movement.
- [136:32]
A
So the visual process will also recruit that center. And so for that reason, you have movement of the monster. That's part of the visual hierarchy, the next step. Think of it as a ladder going next step up. In fact, the mt. If I get a stroke in the MT and I drink a glass of water like this, the water will go like this. It won't flow. It'd go like a black and white movie from 100 years ago. It'd go like this. Or if I see a car, I won't see it as floating and moving like this. It'll be like.
- [137:00]
B
But yeah, like shitty frame rate.
- [137:01]
A
Exactly.
- [137:02]
B
Gotcha.
- [137:03]
A
That's empty. Next you have individual hierarchy. You have something called V4 color vision. Okay? Occasionally the monster will actually have color. That's because you next step in the hierarchy is V4 color. Then in the hierarchy you have things like face, face area of the brain. Do you know the brain has a face area? It's called the fusiform face area. If that region, if that region is messed up and I look at a face, I won't able to recognize faces. In fact, one of my colleagues, old friend he died a few years ago. Called Oliver Sacks. You should look him up. He's a famous writer of neurology.
- [137:39]
B
Can you come a little bit this way?
- [137:41]
A
Sorry. Yes, he's a famous writer of neurology. I'm just mentioning this to Bragg, but Robin Williams plays him in a movie once. He was walking here in New York. Oliver Sachs. He was walking here in New York, and he ran into a man. He saw this man. He went. Ran straight into him. And he was like this. What's going on? And then he looked again, and he realized it's actually a mirror and it's myself I'm looking at. He had proposagnosia. Proposagnosia, a condition where you can't recognize phases. So the face area of the brain is not working. So that is the fusiform face area. Whoa.
- [138:13]
B
Yeah. Here he is. He even looks like Robin Williams a little bit.
- [138:16]
A
This guy was a phenomenon. So I. Oh, he's dead.
- [138:19]
B
I was going to ask you if we could bring him on.
- [138:21]
A
Oh, yeah. This guy was a superstar. I mean, this was one of Ramachandran's friends. So because of Ramachandrans, I would meet superstars like this and become friends with them and.
- [138:29]
B
Oh, yeah. Awakenings.
- [138:31]
A
Yeah, yeah. He was. He was. He was a great guy. We used to correspond by. Right. He would write me handwritten letters. Do you remember? Can you mind? Can you imagine this?
- [138:39]
B
I do them. I swear to God.
- [138:41]
A
Yeah. He would write me handwritten letters.
- [138:45]
B
Lost art right there.
- [138:47]
A
He was very shy guy. He was a very shy guy. He used to. When we give. When he gave lectures or seminars, he would only have us be four or five people. Otherwise he couldn't deliver it. Such a character, unfortunately passed away from, I believe it's brain cancer, but lived.
- [139:04]
B
A long life, though. 92 years old or 82 years old.
- [139:07]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [139:08]
B
When he passed. Wow.
- [139:10]
A
Now. Now, so. So we have face recognition area of the brain, fusiform face area. Again. That's why you add the face to the monster. Next, the visual hierarchy is the Vernicus area. It's the meaning part of the brain. It's called the Vernicus. Again, you recruit that, and then the visual scene become more meaningful. And then finally you have things like the hippocampus part of the brain, the memory part of the brain. And so you recruit memories from your daily life. This would be. I saw Freddy Krueger movie. I saw. My. My grandmother told me about a story about a monster that looked like this or that. And that I will weave into the narrative and then the visual scene will look like this. Does that make sense? So you have narrative and memory, meaning. You have depth, you have color, you have movement, you have basic, basic shapes. And that's how your visual base process works. Sometimes you just stop at the earlier stages of processing to recruit, to use those resources to a better purpose. But sometimes you just hallucinate the bloody thing, the whole thing. And that's why some people literally see the Hat man looking like Freddy Krueger, being in color, moving towards you, strangling you.
- [140:27]
B
And it comes in, like, different forms as well, like culturally, too.
- [140:30]
A
That's the memory part of the brain, because that's a part of the visual cortex and the visual. Not the visual cortex, part of the visual hierarchy. And so that for that reason, depending on your cultural narrative, that will spill into the experience.
- [140:44]
B
Have you ever read Metzger's work before?
- [140:47]
A
No.
- [140:48]
B
He's great. I'll send you it afterwards. He does some great work on this. Kurt Metzger, talking about the Hat man and all that. Different cultural phenomenons. Terrific scientists. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him. But that's, you know. So it's very. Everything that you have described today, especially when it comes to dreams, it's. It's psychedelic in a way. No pun intended. But there's a real, like, math to it as well. Like, you're describing ratios and how the ratios get distorted. Like everything you just described there with all the different parts. And then it gets put together and voila, it, like, spits out this thing.
- [141:26]
A
Yeah.
- [141:26]
B
So people, when their brains decide to do different ratios for them, have wildly different experiences, and it becomes individualized.
- [141:34]
A
Yeah, that's kind of cool. It's very cool. And on that point of vision, a key point to. To emphasize is that even though vision has this hierarchy and things are going from bottom up to. To the higher regions, and we create meaning and we create vision, educate color and depth and all that. There are as many wires going from the. From the top regions down to the lower centers. And by this, I mean the following. Vision is an active process. So when I see a table, When I see this table here, Julian's table, I won't. My brain won't go, oh, here's a table. Let me just take all the fragments and slowly create the whole thing. It actually literally will say. Say, I've seen a table like this a hundred times. And for that reason, I merely will take a splotch from that table and then I will recruit from higher centers of memory and send them down to the visual centers and create the image. Meaning. Vision is as much or even more perhaps about expectation and interpretation versus actually what's out there. And this is a crucial point.
- [142:45]
B
Vision is as much about interpretation versus what actually happens.
- [142:48]
A
It's a controlled hallucination. Vision is a controlled hallucination. Your perceptual reality is your expectation meeting the data. It's not data just coloring everything. It's expectation. I expect the world to look like this, therefore I will see this. But I will also use the data to match my expectations. That's why if you have damage to the eye, for example, you rely more on expectation when you see the world. World versus data. Because there's eye damage. Same if you have damage to some of the lower part of the cortex, the visual cortex. Does that make sense?
- [143:23]
B
Yes.
- [143:23]
A
Expectation versus data is always wrestling and battling it out to find the best fit of the world. But if there's an imbalance into that symmetry. Eye damage. You literally see the world, and then suddenly you might find there's a monkey sitting there on your table, and I'm not being. Not trying to be funny. And literally this called Charles Binet syndrome. Eye damage. You will see elephants here suddenly sitting here, or. Because your expectation of the world, your conceptual beliefs will color the world. So the world is the. The. Our created reality is always based on expectation and data meeting each other, not about the actual thing. I see this table. Your brain goes, I've seen tables like this a thousand times. So I'll just pull from memory and create a table much faster than actually going there and taking the whole table in and processing it one at a time, like one fragment at the time. So this is an important part of it. And that's why hallucinations can occur all the time. Because. Well, not all the time. Most of us, luckily, don't have hallucinations when we are awake. But we are, as humans, prone to them because we have this conceptual overlay to vision. Vision is very conceptually driven. Very conceptually driven. And so if that balance shifts towards more concept. Concept driven, you will hallucinate more.
- [144:44]
B
Are dreams. Is it a stretch to say dreams are effectively hallucinations?
- [144:50]
A
They are effectively a form of hallucinations. They are not only hallucinations, but they're hallucinations. And we have amnesia as well. We forget them. We have. We are delusional, completely delusional in dreams as well. So that's. It's. It's psychopathy at. At peak illusion amnesia, hallucinations. And yet it feels all normal. And you wake up and take it for granted, you know.
- [145:17]
B
Now you said as you went along, we talked about this for one minute and then got off it. You said as you went along, your scientific work, it made you connect more with spirituality and actually made you religion and religious.
- [145:32]
A
I'm sorry.
- [145:33]
B
And so you practice Islam. What was, what was the journey like to, to get to that? And was there, was there one kind of like ripple in the current that caused it in particularly from your work?
- [145:43]
A
I think it's a great point. It's a great point. So I would say the following. I feel like when I was in the ghetto and I saw my friends being shot at, stabbed, I saw these horrible things. And then I saw myself being rescued so many times by forces that were unlikely to happen by chance. I felt like, okay, God must be real. And then once I went to Egypt as well and I studied and I lived a more disciplined life. I just saw the blessings pouring in and reading about science, reading about the brain, the complexity of the brain, the neurons just made me go, look, how did, how did that come about? It just made me more religious as I went to Egypt. Sorry. I went to California and met Ramachandran and I met a top scientist and figured out, well, a lot of these guys behind the, you know, behind the scenes are actually very religious and they believe in prayer and things like that, you know, the top scientists in the world. In fact, I noticed the correlation. The, the greater the scientists were, the more religious they were real versus this is something. Yeah, but often they don't talk about it in public. You know, they keep it to themselves. That, you know, there's a lot of, you know, sciences like to be hard nosed and want to be played cool.
- [147:01]
B
You know, and yeah, they don't want people to have the perception that their religious beliefs would impact the results of their studies.
- [147:07]
A
100 and we have to keep it separate. And that's, that's very important. So we don't mix the two. But look, there's nothing in spirituality and religion that negates science and the two worlds, These two worlds are not incompatible. It's just two levels of description. As I say, as I always say, look, if I told you about 200 years ago, you have all these small animals crawling on your skin right now, trillions of them, you'd say, what are you talking about? Kill this guy. Burn him at the stake. We developed the microscope and lo and behold, you have, have, you know, 90% of your cells are bacterial cells. You are, you're literally a bacterial colony with a few Few human cells hanging on. That's what you are. Right. So that's. And so how do we know that this world is not full of things we can't see? Spiritual dimensions and spiritual dimensions. Dimensions we cannot see. Right. In many ways. In many ways. Think of, think of when you were in your mom, your mom's womb and I told you about a world outside your mom's womb full of rivers and mountains and, and skies and all this. You would think me crazy, right, If.
- [148:21]
B
I were in the womb.
- [148:22]
A
Yeah, you would.
- [148:22]
B
I don't know. That's not reality to me.
- [148:24]
A
That's not reality. At the same, at the same. Here we are in a reality now that's encapsulated by a certain structure in a certain framework work. But there's nothing that negates the fact that another world could be out there. We just, we just live by the limits of, of this current reality. And frankly, you have to be open minded to other worlds. The key thing is, the key thing is though is when you do science, you just don't mix these things up. You cannot be a woo woo scientist.
- [148:50]
B
Yeah.
- [148:50]
A
No way. Because science is a very valid, it's a very, it's a beautiful way to predict the world and have cause effect. The, the process of cause effect show, you know, making us fly planes and, and, and do all these things have satellites and all that. So as long as we don't mix them, spirituality.
- [149:11]
B
Sure.
- [149:11]
A
Yeah. It's a different way. It's very hard to capture that world as well.
- [149:14]
B
I think one of the greatest, greatest is really the wrong words. What? One of the most tragic stories of humanity that we've done to ourselves over time is convince our collective consciousness that science and religion are at war.
- [149:32]
A
Yeah.
- [149:33]
B
Science and religion are seeking the answer to the same question. The meaning of life and where it all comes from. And they don't all have to be right. In fact, it kind of goes against the idea of progress and humanity for everything to all be right. It's about proving and getting to a higher, higher level level of understanding and therefore a higher, higher level of consciousness to eventually maybe you get to the top of it. But you know, I don't pretend to know exactly how it works or what's out there. I, I'm very confident that I fully believe that there's a God, there's some sort of creator that put all this together. I actually think things like math, I, I see it in things like that when, when I see the patterns of how that works and then ties to the physical Physical world, I'm like, that they can't just come out of nothing. Like, that had to be something far beyond true, any sort of understanding, wherever that creator is, for it to happen. But like we were saying, you didn't grow up religious. And then as you got around some of these scientists and realized they were religious as well, just weren't public about it, you started. You started to think about it. Do you remember, like, the moment, though, where it, like, clicked? Not even to say, like, oh, I'm going to go to Islam, like, specifically, but. But where you're just like, you know, well, had you. Had you believed in God before, like, as a kid?
- [150:49]
A
Yeah, it's a good question. So as a kid, I was. As like a very young kid, I was like, is God real? I may believe in him. So I was kind of. I didn't really know. I was six or seven years old. My parents didn't really give me religious education or, like, teach me a lot about religion. But, you know, we generally believed in God, generally and as a family thing. But it wasn't. There was no practices or anything. I would say it was these experiences that I had in my life, in my youth that were so emotionally powerful that it really tilted me towards God and thinking about God. And also my experience of being, like, born in Bulgaria, Kurdish parents living in the ghetto, having to question a lot of things and say, who am I? Why do I. Who's this body? Who is me? Why here? Why now? Why me? Like, this experience? Why am I. Why is this flesh and bone here, like, imprisoned in this body? What is this sound coming out of me? I know I'm going into some rabbit hole here, but literally, why am I stuck in this body? Why? Who's me this. This very second? And I had these. A lot of these experiences when I was like, these flashes when I was like, 17, 18, 19, I thought, well, there's got to be more. There's got to be more. Why am I stuck here? Who's controlling on this? And this was really when I started to think about God. And then I just felt like God was present in my life and when I would do good things, good things would happen. And it just felt. It just felt real to me. And as life just progressed and I went to Egypt and I went to various places in California and all that, there was nothing negating that, you know, there was nothing diminishing that belief. It only became stronger to where I am now. And I'm deeply grateful to where God has, you know, taking me from where I was to where I am now. It feels, it's. I feel so blessed, you see. I feel like I'm the most blessed person in the world. That's what I feel. I feel I've been so blessed by God and he's given me everything. I mean, I feel also logically it makes sense that there's a creator. Why would the universe exist? It just makes sense that there's more. So that's kind of my journey.
- [153:08]
B
And did you pick up Islam because you were thinking about a lot of this while in Egypt and that was what was around.
- [153:13]
A
It's a good. No, I wouldn't say so. So I would say for the Islam. When I was a kid, my parents were Muslims, so they just weren't practicing. So my, my background is Muslim and so that I had that background. But I'd say the reason why I sort of hang on, hang, sort of became or continue to be Muslim and really stick to the faith would be, let's say, monotheism. Just believing in one God is very simple. And believing in one God and believing in prophets, this is very simple. Just made a lot of simple sense. Very, very simple. You know, that idea just, was just straightforward and just made sense. And I've been very, I think in my life, I found the stories of the prophets extremely fascinating. Like the story of Joseph, for example, in the Bible is also in the Quran as well. Fascinating. This guy, he was a slave, first of all. He was telling the story briefly for your, for your audience as well. I love this. Still to this day I always watch Joseph movies and cartoons and stuff. I love it. Now this guy, he's born, he's a bit sort of, he's a scholarly kid. Among his brothers, he has like all these brothers, like 11 brothers or so. And they get really jealous of him because his father, Jacob the Prophet, he's really into Joseph. He loves Joseph. And so Joseph is treated differently. He's like this scholarly, you know, he's always reading the scrolls and all that. And the other kids are just out there in the fields, you know, doing hard labor. So one day they, the brothers decides to go kill Joseph. They want to get rid of him because they're so jealous. And we can get into neuroscience of jealousy too. But they're so jealous of Joseph, they decide to take him out. And so what they do is they go and tell the father, look, Father, we want to take Joseph out and play, you know, go have some fun. The father allows them to go. He's a bit hesitant because he know that there's something else up. It's not right. The brothers don't really like Joseph. Takes him out in the field and then they literally throw him. They throw him in a well. And inside the well, he lies there in the well, he's down there. And they take his shirt and kill a sheep and put some blood on the shirt, go back to the father and say that Joseph was eaten by a wolf. Fast forward. Joseph ends up in Egypt as a slave. Egypt. He ends up in Egypt as a slave. He's working. Suddenly in Egypt, he gets picked up by the Minister of Finance, one of the highest ranking people in the land. And he gets taught how to work in finance, how to be sort of in that ministry role. He learns that. But then he ends up in jail as well because there's a lady that's. That's trying to seduce him. The wife of the minister try to seduce Joseph. And because he's so faithful to God that he doesn't sleep with the woman. So he ends up in jail.
- [156:13]
B
But he goes to jail for not banging her.
- [156:16]
A
I couldn't put that better. Exactly. So he ends up in jail because he didn't have sex with her. Right, Right. So he spends maybe, what is it, seven years in jail interpreting dreams. He becomes a dream interpreter for the people. He has this gift. He can interpret dream and understand dreams. So in the jail, in the prison in Egypt, he interprets dreams. And then suddenly one day he interprets some of the other prisoners dreams and one is released, tells the king about Joseph's talent of interpreting dreams. And he's let out of the prison and he interprets the dream of the king and it turns out his interpretation is correct. And he goes from the prison now to minister becoming a minister of the land, a long way of a very long winded way of saying he went from nothing to this long journey to becoming the dream interpreter minister of the land. And these stories inspired me. I also went from nothing to Egypt and from Egypt to the minister Ramachandran. And you know, I'm not saying I'm not the Minister of the.
- [157:20]
B
No, you see yourself. I understand.
- [157:21]
A
I see myself in people like this, you know, and they. And I've also been tempted in my life by girls or things that I could have done. Things, you know, I've done that, you know, I've not done that. But that's funny.
- [157:37]
B
Congrats on the sex.
- [157:38]
A
Thank you, brother. No, that's, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the opposite, brother. The opposite. The opposite so what I'm saying is I've also had my fair share of challenges and a fair share of things. And so, so these stories are extremely inspiring for me, even as a scientist, you know, to learn about Joseph or Jonah or any of these people in, in these scriptures.
- [158:02]
B
So, yeah, it's, it's. It's very cool when I meet someone who's extremely well rounded, right? So you have all, you know, you're very into science, you're into learning, you're into making sense of why things are the way they are. And you don't just draw on data and experiments and, you know, the scientific method. You're also drawing on history. You're drawing on your own personal experiences and interpreting that. I think that's also why you study some of the things you do, because a lot of the things you do with the brain involve, like, interpretation and why things are. It's kind of like a loop. It's a loop that makes sense. But it's. It's refreshing to hear that when we kind of live in a world where there's a little more dog bone than there should be in these different spaces, both religiously and scientifically. You know, you're kind of like morphing the two. And it was also, you know, before we got on Today, it was 1245, so, like, you had to pray towards Mecca. That was the first time that's ever happened in here. Joe and I were very solemnly, like, watching, watching that. And like, you're dedicated to that. So you have something in you where you recognize it's way bigger than you, right? And that gives you, I think that just gives you incredible, incredible perspective on, on what you do.
- [159:13]
A
100 Julian. I always have this belief, look, whatever you are, who you are, never, never hide it. Be who you are. Be proud of who you are. Be proud of your parents. I have people I sometimes take when I go lecture at Oxford or something. I'll take my dad with me. You know, I haven't seen the audience proud, and this is advice for myself and everybody. Always be proud of who you are. Be proud of your parents. Never think that, you know, just because your parents are wrinkly and old or you have a certain faith or you have a certain background. You were born like I came from. I was being Kurdish in Denmark wasn't the most popular thing, you know, as a kid, I never tried to hit it. Always be, always be open of, you know, never hide who you are. Always be authentic. And that's the way to really live life. So this Is what I, this is also one way of believing in God and having faith is just being proud of who you are and, and never, you know.
- [160:08]
B
Yeah, it's been, it's been humble too. It's being humble and understanding and grateful, Right? Yes.
- [160:13]
A
For what you've been given.
- [160:15]
B
Yeah. There's a lot of people who, whatever it is, they get success in something. They get really good at something. Maybe they're smarter than the average person, which you definitely are.
- [160:24]
A
Thank you, brother.
- [160:25]
B
You know, where consciously or unconsciously, for better or worse, usually worse, like they kind of switch up, up and they kind of start to look back on things from their life and look down upon it.
- [160:38]
A
Yeah.
- [160:38]
B
And I, I, what you just laid out there is the direct opposite of that. And obviously it sounds like you have a great moral compass, so I don't think that'll change. But I think a lot of people can learn something from that too, because, you know, when you get good opportunities and you start to experience more than say, the average person can or whatever.
- [160:57]
A
Yeah.
- [160:58]
B
You know, you want to try to create more opportunities for more people to come after you, you know, and you don't want to, you don't want to write off the people who are never going to get a chance to do that either. You know, you are the way you are, for example, because of your parents in a lot of great ways. And your parents may not have had the opportunity to go the same route, but for you to kind of bring them along with you, literally and figuratively, that's very, very cool.
- [161:19]
A
Like, if there's anything you can take away from this, if I can give any advice, is be good to your parents. Be good to your family. But your parents, your parents, like your mom would die from for you. The things your mom has sacrificed for you cannot even believe your dad. Your parents, be good to them. Honor them. Your parents are guests in this world. And once these guests in this world, they are guests in the sense that they are here for a short time. And when they leave, you will feel their absence and you will regret not doing the things appreciating them enough. You can never give back enough to your parents and especially your mother. So that's what I mean by I guess their presence is so fleeting. So take advantage of it and just raise them up and just honor them. Because, yeah, once they leave, it's great.
- [162:08]
B
That you know that while they're here, it's crucially important.
- [162:11]
A
That's crucially important. Sometimes I have an exercise that I used to do. I don't do it often now as much. But I would sometimes close my eyes and meditate on their death, just thinking out, okay, now in the back of my mind, I know I can always call my mom or dad. So I take my phone and call my mom or dad. I have that right, that blessing. I started thinking about, what if I imagine myself not having my mom and dad to call anymore? How would that feel? And I would pretty feel pretty hollow. I would just imagine them. So this allows you to be more grateful. So we should always, always try to do things like that. Imagine the opposite of them not being here. And that helps us not taking them for granted. It.
- [162:51]
B
Is there a part of you that when you were making that mature shift to really focus on studies, like, you found your thing too, you found something you're interested in, which is critical, you know? Yeah, I think it's always tragic when people study for the sake of studying and doing well, when they don't love what they do.
- [163:08]
A
Right.
- [163:08]
B
But, you know, it's. It's hard to find that sometimes you were able to morph the two. It seems like there's a party that also really cared about making your parents proud and leaving some kind of legacy, that they're giving you the opportunity on this earth by bringing you here to leave 100%.
- [163:26]
A
Look, my mom, as I said, was an orphan. The way her dad died was horrible. She was about 10 or 11 in Iraq. One day her dad called her in and said, look, come my daughter, there's something I want to tell you. And my mom ran in, as I said, 10 years old. And she said, go call your mother. So she went and got her mom, then went over to her dad. She went over to her dad and her dad, my granddad said, look, I think I'm checking out. I think I'm dying, so please forgive me. Just forgive me. And then within a second, he just fell down and died. And my mom just stared at him, being 10 years old, staring at him, her, like her mother was in shock. Suddenly her older brother, my mom's older brother, ran into the room and saw her father being dead. And now my granddad, her mother, my mom's dad and her brother had a tumultuous relationship, had a really bad relationship. So he immediately got in shock, took a glass, broke, like, smashed his head so bad blood would pour from his head. And now my mom was watching her brother harming himself and her dad dying in this traumatized state.
- [164:46]
B
Oh, shit.
- [164:47]
A
Pretty bad. And then, because in Iraq at the time, Saddam's regime would not Allow for. It was like, you know, the quarantine kind of thing. They couldn't leave. They couldn't leave the house until like 4 or 5am so the body was just lying there for like, what, seven, eight hours. And she was just watching him dead. You know, this was her situation. Horrible, right? So imagine this is one. One scene from her life. Later on when she was a bit older, her and mom would go, for example, to visit different cities in Iraq. And suddenly bombs would fly. And bombs, things will just. And they would see bodies all over, you know, dead, dead bodies. And they would go into sewers to protect themselves. And so she see all these things. And then later when she went to Copenhagen, she would hear fireworks and she would hide, you know, she would hide from fireworks, from PTSD symptoms. This is my mother's story. My dad, I don't want to go into a story because is this very long? Is pretty long, but kind of similar story with her with his dad dying. And so I have trauma in my DNA. Now I'm gonna go to science here because it's important.
- [165:57]
B
You are going right where I want you to go, man.
- [165:59]
A
It's amazing. In science, in our DNA, we have something called methyl groups sitting on the DNA and turning genes on and off. Turning genes on and off. Now if you have. This is called epigenetics. So I have genes. I have a certain genes balance genes, right? These are inherited from mom and dad, 50 from mom, 50% from dad. But our genes are propensity towards anxiety, propensity toward mental illness, propensity towards sleep disturbances, propensity towards stress, all stored in the. In the genetics, in the code, but can be turned on and off depending on our experiences. And not only our experiences, but also our parents experiences.
- [166:41]
B
Yes.
- [166:42]
A
Okay, so this is crucial. Let me use a rat study analogy to illustrate this. If you have baby. If baby rats are licked by their mothers a lot, okay? So they get groomed by their mothers and licked. Their epigenetic switch gets turned on such that they are less anxious later on in life. They are less stressed, less anxious. Opposite, the mom is neglectful. The epigenetic switch goes off in a different direction, and they are more stressed and anxious in their life depending on the switch. Okay. In other words, on the DNA, methyl groups turn on and off these genes. Now, another similar experiment. You have mice, they are exposed to a smell. They get a smell. Like something. It could be like, let's say citrus fruit or something. A certain smell, potent smell. They get that. And at the same time as a smell they get electrical. They get electric shock zapping them, okay? Later on, you remove the electrical stimulant, the stimulus, and you have. And the smell alone produces what? Profound fear. Okay? This is called classical conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning. They feel fear from the. From the smell alone. Okay?
- [168:05]
B
So you see that in PTSD all the time.
- [168:07]
A
You see it in PTSD all the time. Here's the fun. Here's the interesting part. Not fun, but here's the interesting part.
- [168:13]
B
Part.
- [168:14]
A
These mice, their kids. These mice, their kids have never been exposed to the electrical shock yet when they smell that smell, they will feel profound fear not knowing why. Okay? Simply because in their genetic switch, they learned to fear that particular smell. But not only that, these mice's kids. So we go another generation down. These kids, the grandkids of the original mouse, now smells this smell, and they will feel what fear from a. Oh, my God. So imagine me. Imagine me, Belinda, now living in Copenhagen or living in being California or being in New Jersey. And I see certain things and I feel fear and anxious. For example, not knowing why, not having no idea why it's happened, not knowing that my genetic switch, my mom and dad were in war in Iraq and Saddam Hussein and bombs. And I don't know all this yet. I have a genetic makeup, an epigenetic, switches all over the place, making me who I am today. Okay? So as a person, I had to overcome all that. That's a crucial part of my story, too, that I have to overcome all that, bringing it back to me.
- [169:33]
B
When did you realize you had to. Like, when did you understand this?
- [169:36]
A
Well, from a scientific perspective, or you mean just generally? Like, generally. Generally, I kind of knew that, you know, I had certain, you know, perhaps certain aversions or fears or whatever. But what I think really changed things for me, and this is the key thing of. And the key point of the story. Although I had the trauma passed down from my parents, my mom and my dad were much like the rats who licked their bits, their babies all the time. They were very nurturing, very nurturing. So they would give me love. You cannot imagine. My mom is the most loving person you can imagine. Always hugging me, always since I was a kid, always loving me, always taking care of me. My dad the same way, taking me out, even though we were poor in the ghetto, he had to work a lot. But whenever I was with him, always love. And so I think that sort of rebalanced the whole thing. So the epigenetic clock got. Got shifted a bit, and I didn't all the Times that I could have gone and this guy, he beat me up in the ghetto. I could have gone there and beat him up. I had a knife, I could have stabbed him. I didn't. Something stopped me. What was that? Well, God, of course I believe in that. But it was also the voice of my parents, the love that I experienced, empathy in me that said look, don't do that. You'll destroy your life. You destroy your parents life. So I think that's the way to think about it. It on the science point, another point, you know, a baby's brain is about the synapses. There are about 50% more synapses in a baby's brain. Do you know that?
- [171:04]
B
Yes, I have read that before.
- [171:05]
A
That's very interesting.
- [171:06]
B
I actually thought it was higher.
- [171:09]
A
Interesting. So the brain of a baby is hyper connected. There's all these connections and the more you get stimulated as a child and stimulated not only emotionally but you know, nurtured but also intellectually stimulated and, and really your parents take you out and play with you and all that, you will keep a lot of these connections.
- [171:28]
B
Yes.
- [171:28]
A
And you will shave away the bad ones. You'll remove the bad ones. And for me that was the case. I got kept a lot of my connections because of. My parents would play with me. My mom, we didn't have like toys and we didn't have things like actual things I could play with. But they would very imaginative and fantasy and take me out and she would use her scarf and use it as a Zorro thing. When we were like for the. What do you call when you had to dress up for school. We didn't have like the Zorro thing, mask and all that. So I just wear her scarf and I would have fun and, and that was, that was my life and I think. And my parents, I have to give thanks. So.
- [172:06]
B
So they. You simultaneously have a self awareness of the epigenetics, trauma genes that exist within your family. Yes. Whether or not your parents consciously understood that or not, they took direct actions to help cushion that blow to a point that it affects you less because of that in a way. But it does make me think man, like we see there's a lot of wars going on around the world right now. There. There are and it's war is hell and it's fought among civilians. And you have, have men, women and children who. Particularly the children they're being raised in in these fires right now.
- [172:45]
A
Yeah.
- [172:46]
B
You know, the reality is mathematically speaking, on a statistical population level, not all parents are going to be like your parents, a lot of them. And through no fault of their own, they're not going to do those things. And it does make you wonder where generationally people become the same, you know, fear the same things and then act in a certain way because of that, always in defense mode that then can turn into offense mode way because of the things that have happened in the past. And you're not, you're giving a great explanation, but you're not helping me feel better. Faith on, on that changing.
- [173:21]
A
True, that's true. But let's talk about free will for a second. So do we have free will? Right. So I went out to that guy, he had stolen my jacket. He had taken my jacket, stolen it. I took a knife. I wanted to go stab him, right? That's the scenario, right? Let's say I was about 14. It wasn't like yesterday, I was like.
- [173:41]
B
13 years old, pocket knife, Swiss army.
- [173:43]
A
Let's say, let's say something like that, right? I didn't do it. Why? Because my parents voice came into my head saying, don't do that. Even though the guy humiliated you, he stole your things, he, you know, he's been this and that, don't do anything like that. I stopped. Now, most neuroscientists don't believe in free will. This is actually the case. They will say, look, the reason you did not go and hurt this other chap was because of your genetics, because of your epigenetics, because of your chemical state. Maybe you had slept well that last few months, you had not been very stressed. Your experiences were so such that you were determined not to kill him. Predetermined by nature and the circumstances. Your genetics and your hormonal status state, for example, your brain state. This is what the many scientists will tell you. And they will use an experiment called the Libet experiment. It's an interesting experiment. Go. Something like this about I think 40, 40 years ago is a classical experiment in neuroscience. You have a clock ticking by five minutes and you tell the chap sitting there, you say, baland, within the next five minutes, whenever you want, reach out and grab for this thing in front of you whenever you want. So after 10 seconds I may go down here, after 30 seconds I may go grab for it, 45 seconds, so forth, I grab it. Interesting. But here's the real interesting part. When you measure the brain activity using an EEG on the brain, it turns out that your brain will pick up on the signal, your awareness and the urge to move about half a second before you actually move. Whoa, half A second. It's called the readiness potential. So before I even have the awareness of knowing, my brain knows by half a second. It already picks it up and says, okay, it knows by half a second. Before this made, a lot of scientists go crazy and say, look, look, we have no free will. It's all in the brain. The brain already know. Already know that you would do that you would do the movement, right? You would do the action before you had the conscious urge or awareness. Now, there's some opposition to this argument, but let's, let's look at another twist on the experiment that you can do. What if, what if the guy, he sees on the screen half a second before he does the movement, he sees on the screen something saying, now you'll do the movement. How will he react? This is kind of philosophical, but basically, half a second before he actually does the movement, he's shown a sign on the screen saying, you will move. Now there's three possibilities, okay? One, he will say the machine has esp. That's the one possibility. Second, he will say the machine is controlling me, okay, I'm a puppet, I can't help it. Okay? Or the third is he might post date it, say, oh, it came later, it was a later interview. These are the three possibilities. But I think the post dating is interesting that when you post date it. My point is here, that the reason why you can't use this as a argument against free will, this libet experiment is that the whole time, space or the whole time and continue continuity and sense of time in the brain is kind of smeared a bit. It's not that pure. And the time it takes for the brain to pick it up compared to when you actually do the movement is not that fine and clear cut. So I think that's one of the arguments against, against that this, you know, this argument, the argument that this shows we have, we have no free will.
- [177:38]
B
There's a lot I want to dig into in that.
- [177:40]
A
Yep.
- [177:41]
B
We're going to be bringing you back though. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that part next time because that's a whole can of worms. The one thing I just don't want to leave people hanging on something we touched a little bit, but you said you were going to touch more before you go. Oh yeah, on this one. So we're gonna bring Balon back. Don't worry, he'll be back here in three weeks. We already talked about it on the break. But you have you laid out a little bit of your work earlier, comparing it with dreams about love and the research there. So you're starting to give lectures on that and studying like the brain science behind love. What, what, what made you interested in doing that?
- [178:13]
A
Well, to, to be frank, I mentioned this during one of my previous courses at Peterson Academy. I talked about human nature. It was of course about human nature, why we feel attraction. And there was a lecture on love and why we feel, you know, altruism, romantic love, spiritual love and all that. And it's kind of, you know, I mentioned, oh, it'd be fun to do a course on love. And then, so one of the, one of the, One of the directors over there and works there, Nancy is a really nice girl. She told the folks, Michaela and Jordan Fuller, her husband, about this. And then they asked me to. To do this course and that was interesting. So I learned a lot about preparing for this course. It's extremely fascinating learning about love, really digging deep into doing a whole course on love itself, romantic love. And then going into why the passion and infatuation of love. And love is interesting. Romantic love is so interesting when you're in it, you feel like it's the whole world and the same, the purpose of existence. And I got to start in my course. I have a lot of. I have a lot of vignettes or case studies from movies. Titanic, why James Bond is charming, you know, why the movie Cinema Paradiso. Do you know that movie?
- [179:36]
B
Oh, yeah. That's one of the best of all time.
- [179:39]
A
How come he waits for Elena, Helena, on the 100 days he wakes, wait in front of her window and then the last minute he runs off and she runs after him. What's the neurochemistry of that? You know, and so it has a lot of interesting case studies and looking at the brain as well. And so I think it will be fun. One of the most fun courses I'll teach.
- [179:58]
B
How do. So when you're breaking down like fiction, like that, how do you relate that scientifically?
- [180:04]
A
Oh, neuroscience of that is, for example, anticipation of reward. When does dopamine centers fire? When? If I'm with a girl now and I. And I leave her, when is the most. When is her brave brain most likely to crave my absence? Is it a week or is it two weeks after my departure? Why doesn't it work to be too much into her, a girl in the beginning or vice versa? Girl into a man. But. But it's more. It's more girl men into a girl. That can be a bad thing. Well, it has to do with that. The Girl, for example, expect prefrontal integration. What's prefrontal integration is that if you show a girl too early that you have fallen for her her emotionally. I'm not saying to play it fake and be a different person, but the fact is if you see a girl and after a week tell her that you're in love with her, Joey knows what happens. She'll dump you. Right. If I'm in love with you, you're.
- [180:55]
B
Never even going to get to the point to be dumped.
- [180:57]
A
Correct. Why is that? Well, it's because she expects a man to have calm, manly composure, which is a direct correlate of neural circuitry that has to do with prefrontal inhibition, being able to control your sexual desires, emotional core and all that. And that itself is a predictor of survival in a very dangerous world and a predictor of resource acquisition. And it's a predictor of all these things that will help you survive. So this is one example of how your brain directly and neuroscience plays into these love scenarios. Why is Leonard DiCaprio so damn charming in Titanic? Think he's a, he's a, he's a. He's a man's Leonard the G. He's handsome. Yeah, he's handsome in the movie. I agree.
- [181:44]
B
Yeah.
- [181:45]
A
So it's. But, but it's not the whole story.
- [181:46]
B
You know, you're right.
- [181:47]
A
He's extremely charming because he's basically a bum. Right. He's a poor guy who's on this, on this, on this big ship with this rich lady. But he's so comfortable in his own bloody skin. He's like, he's, he's like, I'm a bum. I have nothing, but I'm gonna just own it.
- [182:04]
B
That's right.
- [182:05]
A
And that confidence is a direct predictor of survival. And in a very harsh world, it's. If you are confident. That shows how the brain is better integrated versus a non confident guy. Which would mean a non confident guy would have less prefrontal integration, be more impulsive, have more fear and anxiety centers of the brain being active, which again would be again, go against resource acquisition and providing this lady with a, with a protective environment. Yes, the Bodyguard. Have you seen the Bodyguard? With Whitney Houston?
- [182:42]
B
Of course.
- [182:42]
A
Kevin Costner. Another example. Why is he so damn charming again? Frank. His name is Frank. The guy. Yeah. Protector role. Women turns out, love protecting, like male that can protect. Because again, survival, competence, prefrontal activation. So that does tons of stuff. Stuff there.
- [183:00]
B
I think with the Titanic one too. It's a great point. Like he's comfortable in his own skin. But he also. The character Jack, played by Leo, he finds a way to chase without attachment.
- [183:13]
A
Y.
- [183:13]
B
Right. He's detached from the outcome. He'd like her to like him, but he doesn't. He. He's not gonna. It's not gonna affect his reason for being if. If she doesn't. So, like, there's some sort of mental game there where it's a combination of confidence and showing interest, but not tying that interest to the meaning of his life. And it makes her simultaneously then want to chase him.
- [183:39]
A
It's a beautiful point. And I think. And you can clearly see in that movie that Leo or Jack is definitely into her. When she rejects him at some point in the middle of the story, he says, I can't. I'll stay with my mom and rich guy. And he goes out to this out on the very front of the ship. And you can see him. He's kind of handsome with his hair sort of. He's kind of looking outside and his eyes are kind of closed and he's looking. You can see he's bloody heartbroken. It's not like he's heartbroken. He's not like he's just, oh, I'm nonchalant. I just lost perhaps the girl of my life. He's heartbroken, but he remains composed. And that's the point. You want to have emotions. You want to feel the thing. You want a bloody happy, have feelings for the girl and being bold about it, but you want to have that prefrontal integration where you can stay composed and stay, like, on track with life even though things are shaky.
- [184:34]
B
You feel things, but you feel emotions. But you don't let the emotions control you and define you.
- [184:38]
A
You have the. The emotional limbic core will not overtake the prefrontal. And it didn't in Jack's case. He just went out and he was looking and he was obviously sad. And sadness is a good thing. It shows emotion. And then. What's her name?
- [184:54]
B
Rose.
- [184:54]
A
Rose runs out after him. And he looks. He says, they told me you were out here. And she looks at. She looks at Jack and says. He says, I changed my mind. You came back. She says, I changed my mind. And he says nothing. He says, shh, come here. And then they go out and he holds her and says, yo. And he does one of his charming with girls. Not that you want to ask me, because I'm very clumsy at this, but I used to have a few tricks in my. Up my sleeve.
- [185:24]
B
I think that's about to change.
- [185:26]
A
I used to have a few tricks up my sleeve. When I was in my teenage years. I was a bit more smooth. I'm not too brat.
- [185:31]
B
When he had a Swiss army. Enough. Just saying.
- [185:33]
A
No, I'm just joking. But look, what he does is extremely charming. He says, close your eyes. He's being very mysterious. He's being very sort of romantic. And then. And, you know, I'm flying Jack and all that. It's actually very romantic. That whole scene. It's a very. Not only romantic, but it's a. From a dopamine perspective and a brain perspective. It's very persuasive. It's a metaphor for. Look, I'm gonna. I'm gonna be. I'm gonna take you on a magic carpet in life and just allow you to fly and be free. Free from the constraints of the palace and the rich chap and all that. So. So it. It's in. Tapping into our dopamine centers.
- [186:11]
B
It's a great movie to teach with because it. Because it's a fine balance, you know, that like, you'll see a lot of things like in the. In the, you know, online, like Tatusphere or whatever, where it's like, you gotta go hard this way and be like you. And that's. That's not reality.
- [186:27]
A
No, no.
- [186:27]
B
But the other way of being needy and all over it and trying to emotionally attach yourself.
- [186:33]
A
You cannot do that to.
- [186:34]
B
Really, you cannot do.
- [186:35]
A
No, you can't do that.
- [186:35]
B
It does not make any sense. And it doesn't make sense scientifically to a woman's brain.
- [186:39]
A
You can't. It doesn't make sense. And she can't help it. She's not like, she hates you and she's being evil.
- [186:44]
B
No, she can't help it.
- [186:45]
A
She's wired like this. And look, same thing for you. If the girl is all over you all the time.
- [186:49]
B
That's exactly right. It still works the same way.
- [186:52]
A
But I want to say something else. I don't want your audience and your folks to go away with the idea that you have to play a role and be an authentic.
- [186:59]
B
No, you're not saying that. I'm not taking it that way.
- [187:01]
A
My point is when time comes, when time is ripe and there's a girl there and you've been. You've been sufficiently composed and you haven't chased and you've been yourself and you've been authentic, you haven't played games. Don't play any of. Don't play games. It will destroy you. Playing psychological Machiavellian games is the worst thing you can do 100%, be yourself. But when time comes, let her know what you feel inside. Yes, because you will regret it. And there's nothing worse than the regret of a woman that could have become. You could have a story with. A beautiful story with. And you held back because of fear, because of fear of rejection. Don't. Don't overwhelm her, but bloody tell her what you feel.
- [187:40]
B
That's what I'm saying. People either never do that or do it way too early. It's a balance between the two. And I love that you said, don't play these Machiavellian games because they'll smell right through that eventually. Like, because you can't keep up an act forever. Eventually the truth will shine through and suddenly you'll be a different person than they may have fallen for if you put up a facade. But with, with love, it's. It's a matter of like, I. I don't mean to be like, woo, woo, or you know, selfish with this or whatever, but you have to love and respect yourself first. You have to and value that first in order to be able to let love in. There is literally, scientifically, a woman is not going to come to a man who shows the weakness of not being comfortable, comfortable in their own skin to begin with. If you want to have them come your way, you then need to be able to not only maintain that, but when the time comes, know that you have the timing to be vulnerable in that way. Because vulnerability doesn't have to be, you know, weakness or something like that. Like, we take it, it can, it can be a sign of. Of that same comfort in your own skin.
- [188:46]
A
It's not a strength. I think being vulnerable in the right situation, in the right context is definitely side of strength. It's a sign you have to be vulnerable. You have to open up. If you want to share something with another person, with a lady, you got to be willing to let some of that emotion and the core you come out. And this is just very important. But I agree, definitely Machiavellianism and all that. Look, in the brain, you have two systems. You have a system called the utilitarian, cold cognition, cold logic, cold serial thinking. It's just the DLP of C we talked about before. It's out here. But the medial prefrontal cortex up here is crucially important. We want to use this. Why? It's involved in emotional intellect, emotional decision making. Okay, so now if you are utilitarian, Machiavellian, right? And every decision you make with A girl is always calculated. It's always, you like chatgpt. How do I make her fall in love with me? How do I trick her? How do I do this and that? It's all, this is a psychopath speaking. But if you use this part of the brain, that the medial part of the prefrontal cortex, you always consult with the emotional part. How do I feel right now? How might she feel if I hurt it like this? How much she feel in this situation? How I feel about this? So it's. It's intellect paired with some emotion. And, you know, and that's important so we don't become robots and don't go around, you know, hurting people and, and not consulting our. Our hearts.
- [190:22]
B
Dr. Blangelo, we're going to do this in three weeks again. All right? There's. There's a lot on the bone here, but I've been doing this five and a half years. I've done. You know, when this comes out, it'll be 350 some episodes or something like that.
- [190:35]
A
That.
- [190:37]
B
You'Re a superstar.
- [190:38]
A
Thank you.
- [190:39]
B
I. That same feel, that same feeling I had when Rosalie walked in there for 124, like, I got it with you. You're amazing at explaining this stuff, making it fun. You're a great speaker. So do not stop. Keep going.
- [190:51]
A
Thank you, brother. I love you, man. You're. You're a cool guy. I love your. You know, everything here has been so fun. I've loved it.
- [190:56]
B
Thank you very much.
- [190:57]
A
Very, very, very talented.
- [190:58]
B
Thank you. I will see you soon. All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that, like, button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.