Live audience (Sydney Opera House) — This is a live event Q&A with no formal guest; questions came from the audience at Huberman Lab's 'The Brain Body Contract' event in Sydney, Australia, answered by host Andrew Huberman.
The gist
Recorded live at the Sydney Opera House as part of 'The Brain Body Contract,' this is the audience Q&A portion of the event. Andrew Huberman answers questions spanning the neuroscience of stress and mindset, why time speeds up or slows down (frame rate and the visual system), his practical jet lag and circadian light protocol, the science of psychedelics like psilocybin and MDMA for neuroplasticity and trauma, sauna/cold and temperature's role in sleep, adrenaline habituation, and fidgeting and focus. He closes with heartfelt advice to a 17-year-old on finding passion through introspection and remembered 'feeling states.' Throughout he weaves in personal stories about David Goggins, Rick Rubin, and his own psychedelic trial experiences.
Big reveals
- Huberman admits he has 'completely ramped' his stance on psychedelics after years of being too afraid to discuss them for fear of losing his job.
- Reveals he personally participated in both a psilocybin clinical trial and an MDMA trial as an adult, calling the psilocybin sessions 'absolutely terrifying.'
- Discloses he experimented with LSD too young as a teenager and had 'pretty bad experiences,' and does not recommend it.
- Claims the famous paper alleging MDMA neurotoxicity was retracted because researchers accidentally dosed subjects with methamphetamine instead of MDMA.
- Notes much of the data on MDMA's lack of toxicity comes from studies on Mormon (LDS) subjects who avoid other drugs.
- Tells a story of a straight-edge friend who escalated cold plunging to sitting naked in it for 45 minutes, warning 'Easy Does It.'
- States that essentially everyone today qualifies as a 'shift worker' due to artificial light and devices.
Things worth remembering
- Ali Crum's Stanford research shows that whatever you believe about stress (if true) is what actually happens physiologically, supporting a 'stress-is-enhancing' mindset.
- The anterior mid-cingulate cortex grows when you do hard things you don't want to do, and electrical stimulation makes patients want to 'lean into' challenge.
- Our perceived 'frame rate' on life is set by the visual system: close focus = higher frame rate (time feels slow), distant viewing = lower frame rate.
- Your temperature minimum is roughly your no-alarm wake time minus 4 hours; light before it delays your clock, light after it advances it.
- Midday sunlight is the 'circadian dead zone' and does not shift your clock, though it still helps mood.
- To sleep you must cool by 1-3 degrees; a sauna or hot bath warms the surface so the body overcools the core afterward, aiding sleep.
- Matt Walker's mantra: 'warm up to cool down to fall asleep, stay cool to stay asleep, warm up to wake up.'
- The amygdala is better understood as a novelty detector than a pure fear center, and habituates to repeated irrelevant stimuli.
- A neurosurgeon told Huberman that tapping your foot dispels excess anticipatory activity in the basal ganglia, steadying the hands during fine work.
- Eating on the local schedule acts as a 'zeitgeber' (timekeeper) that helps shift the circadian clock when traveling.
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Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
“a kind of Mantra that I learned from the great Matt Walker who wrote The Great Book why we sleep” — Andrew Huberman 00:37:32Find it on Amazon