Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Now talking about something totally different.Although Barry Manilow may have an incredibly powerful
habinula or wait, hang on,hubenula? Is that it is? That
it? Doctor Kira Bobinett. Imean, I got to tell you.
I think I'm smart, and I'venever heard of this part of the brain.
So I'm a little disappointed in myself. Welcome to the show. Thank
(00:24):
you. Yeah, don't feel bad. It's a very new area. This
is the first conversation that I youknow, that we're all having about it.
So what is the hubenula and whatis it as part of the brain.
Yeah, it's about a quarter inchlarge, and it's in the middle
of your brain, deep in therecesses, and it's the most powerful behavior
controller ever found to date. Itcontrols your dopamine reward systems if you ever
(00:48):
heard about that, controls your motivation, controls depression, anxiety, addictions,
eating, sleeping, all of it. So how has this escaped us up
to this point? I think thatwe notice these things, these troubles that
we have controlling our behavior. Youknow, in psychology there's something called the
no do gap, which is Iknow what to do, I just don't
(01:10):
do it and that's very, veryfamiliar. All of us deal with that
all the time and probably every aspectof our lives, but we just didn't
know the neuroscience behind it, thebrain science behind it, until recently.
So we were talking kind of yesterdayand we got the super Bowl coming up
this weekend and the difference between professionalathletes and their level of dedication and motivation.
(01:32):
You don't just get to be inthe super Bowl, right, this
is a year's long endeavor where mostof these athletes have dedicated their lives to
football in a way that most ofus have not dedicated to anything in our
lives. How did they What isit about their habanula or whatever it's called
that makes them able to do that? What's the difference? Yeah, So
(01:53):
if you take Rock Prudy, he'skind of the poster child for the habenula
winner of the year. You know, he's a quarterback for the forty nine
ers. He came from behind incollege beat out two different He was third
string quarterback. Then he was astarter. Same thing with the forty nine
ers. He started out his thirdstring. As you may know, he
was mister Irrelevant, the last inthe draft going in. Now that you
(02:15):
know jokingly call him mister irrelevant.I call him mister iteration because people who
deal with the Havenula well are basicallykeeping it quiet. So this is a
kill switch for your motivation that existsin your brain. Any time you're frustrated,
you feel like you're losing, especiallyin like a game situation, you
(02:35):
feel like a failure, those kindsof things, this is going to turn
on and then it's going to killyour motivation to keep trying. So if
you look at the Super Bowl,the momentum that we talk about, you
know that we all notice as sportsfans, is one team dominating the havenula
and triggering the Havenula of the otherteams, so they feel like they're losing,
so they start to lose their motivationeven slightly, even though they're a
(02:58):
professional athletes. Well, you knowthat's I think I had the opposite perception,
like somehow this was responsible for ourmotivation. So but what you're telling
me is it's the exact opposite.It's the wet blanket on our motivation exactly.
It keeps you from touching the hotstove more than once, so you
protect yourself from risk and harm.But in the case of doing the right
(03:19):
thing and the thing that you wantto do that high performance. It is
your biggest obstacle. You want tokeep it quiet and don't poke the bear
if you were. So, isthis almost like our lizard brain? And
I just had a conversation with anotherguy about mindfulness and purpose and things of
that nature, and he talked aboutyour conscious and your subconscious brain. So
is this the part of the brainthat kept us from being eaten by a
(03:40):
saber tooth tiger? Yeah, itactually kept us from eating the poison bearing
more than once you know, orlearning from our mistakes and also things that
made us sick and ill and riskour lives. That's fascinating to me because
that sort of lends itself to thenotion that at that part of our brain
(04:00):
is almost the institutional knowledge that hasbeen passed down as the human species has
evolved. So how do you knowor how can you there? Is there
purposeful ways that you can kind ofshut that that voice up. Yeah.
So in the case of you know, the super Bowl, you know,
whoever is better at managing their thoughtsof failure is going to win because that's
(04:25):
who the momentum goes to. Andso when we do things in our career,
when we do things in parenting,are healthy eating those kinds of things.
The most important thing is that weeither don't think we failed at something,
or if we do think that wefailed, that we get on that
real quick and reframe it into someother narrative so that we can keep going.
(04:45):
That's that's absolutely fascinating. I so, is this a when I look
at at a brain? Is thislike? I mean, when you look
at it at a brain you cansee the prefrontal cortex and things of that
nature. Can you actually discern thisthis particular part of your brain on an
X ray or an MRI or whatever. I don't know what you used to
look at a brain, but Imean, can you actually see the different
(05:05):
part? Yes, you can,and it lights up when you think you
failed, and if it lights up, it kills your motivation to keep trying
that thing. But of course,as you mentioned, it's subconscious. It's
not like we have a sharp painthat occurs that tells us that this is
lit up. We just think thatwe didn't. We don't have motivation,
and then we blame ourselves and wefeel shamed and we feel like we failed.
(05:29):
Instead of realizing that we just hada failure moment, a failure trigger
that we didn't tend to. Soin theory, if you could shut down
that part of your brain entirely,like disable that part of your brain,
you could create a fearless soldier.You could create a fearless person who felt
(05:49):
no, you know, hesitation abouttrying anything difficult, right, I mean
in theory, yeah, I meanin the negative sense. They've done post
autopsy analyzation of brains that people youknow who overdose on heroin in the UK
(06:10):
and their habiula was shrunken down.So it's actually like it's a brake pedal
in your car. It stops youfrom doing the bad thing, including the
heroin, and when that's worn downor it's shrunk down, then you don't
have breaks. You just go unopposed. And that could be foolish in the
case of addiction, or it couldbe wise in the case of being brave
(06:30):
in your life. So would thatgo at least a little bit towards explaining
why some people have so much troublebreaking the cycle of addiction. They if
they've damaged that part of their brainto the point where they no longer have
a governor that makes a lot ofsense. I mean that that's kind of
illuminating. Yeah, if anybody knowssomebody who's struggled with this disease of addiction,
(06:54):
it looks exactly like that. Itlooks like they don't have any breaks
and they're just going to drive offthe cliff and there's nothing that they can
do for themselves. And that's whyhaving rehab and systems of external people helping
out is really important. That isabsolutely fascinating. Doctor Kyra Bobinett is my
guest. She's got a book aboutthis called Unstoppable Brain. How long have
(07:15):
you been studying this part of theHow did you decide to study this?
Yeah, my first book, WellDesigned Life. I actually was the first
to combine a couple of early studieson habnula action into this failure triggered into
motivation. Loss was clear to meback then, but I was the first
to kind of put those two,you know, peanut butter and chocolate together.
(07:36):
Says about eight years ago or nineyears ago. And since the pandemic,
there has literally been an explosion ofresearch studies on human brain, on
rat brain, all these things thatreally kind of fill out the picture of
how powerful this thing is it's shownto control depression, cause depression, cause
anxiety, cause addiction, cause insomnia, cause overeating. It's everything that I've
(08:01):
ever cared about as a physician tryingto help people get healthy. So are
we at a point now are thereObviously heroin has a negative impact on it,
we've learned that, But are weat a point now with the beginning
of the understanding that we'll be ableto find drugs that specifically act on the
hevenula so you could maybe have somesort of medical treatment for someone who has
(08:24):
a severe addiction issue. Yeah.So far, there's been two studies that
kind of point in that direction.One is that they did a deep brain
stimulation of this area of a verydepressed woman who was not responding to any
other treatment, and they reversed hersymptoms completely. The other one is they
found that ketymine. You know,there's a whole revolution in psychiatry around psychedelic
(08:46):
assistant therapy, and they found thatketymine specifically bonds and absorbs into this part
of the brain and stays there forabout three months, which is about what
you see clinically as sim relief fromdepressions. Well, that is amazing I
mean, it is just I haveto say. It's like I always say,
this is an incredible time to bealive, right, I mean,
(09:09):
because we're learning all of these newthings, and for me, just having
that bit of knowledge of when Ifeel my motivation waning, I can now
say to myself, hemnula's shut up, right, Like, I don't need
to hear from you at this moment. I'm gonna be fine that kind of
stuff. I mean, I knowit sounds silly, but I will use
this. I will absolutely use thisto say I know it's just my habenula
(09:31):
and I need to get over myselfand get moving. Obviously I'm not talking
about people with severe depression and thingsof that nature, but for me personally,
I find this incredibly useful information.Doctor Bobbinette. I really appreciate your
time today and your work. Thankyou so much for having me. All
right, That is doctor Kira Bobinette, And you can find a link on
the blog for her information and herbook. I think I'm gonna buy this
(09:52):
book and read it.
Now talking about something totally different.Although Barry Manilow may have an incredibly powerful
habinula or wait, hang on,hubenula? Is that it is? That
it? Doctor Kira Bobinett. Imean, I got to tell you.
I think I'm smart, and I'venever heard of this part of the brain.
So I'm a little disappointed in myself. Welcome to the show. Thank
(00:24):
you. Yeah, don't feel bad. It's a very new area. This
is the first conversation that I youknow, that we're all having about it.
So what is the hubenula and whatis it as part of the brain.
Yeah, it's about a quarter inchlarge, and it's in the middle
of your brain, deep in therecesses, and it's the most powerful behavior
controller ever found to date. Itcontrols your dopamine reward systems if you ever
(00:48):
heard about that, controls your motivation, controls depression, anxiety, addictions,
eating, sleeping, all of it. So how has this escaped us up
to this point? I think thatwe notice these things, these troubles that
we have controlling our behavior. Youknow, in psychology there's something called the
no do gap, which is Iknow what to do, I just don't
(01:10):
do it and that's very, veryfamiliar. All of us deal with that
all the time and probably every aspectof our lives, but we just didn't
know the neuroscience behind it, thebrain science behind it, until recently.
So we were talking kind of yesterdayand we got the super Bowl coming up
this weekend and the difference between professionalathletes and their level of dedication and motivation.
(01:32):
You don't just get to be inthe super Bowl, right, this
is a year's long endeavor where mostof these athletes have dedicated their lives to
football in a way that most ofus have not dedicated to anything in our
lives. How did they What isit about their habanula or whatever it's called
that makes them able to do that? What's the difference? Yeah, So
(01:53):
if you take Rock Prudy, he'skind of the poster child for the habenula
winner of the year. You know, he's a quarterback for the forty nine
ers. He came from behind incollege beat out two different He was third
string quarterback. Then he was astarter. Same thing with the forty nine
ers. He started out his thirdstring. As you may know, he
was mister Irrelevant, the last inthe draft going in. Now that you
(02:15):
know jokingly call him mister irrelevant.I call him mister iteration because people who
deal with the Havenula well are basicallykeeping it quiet. So this is a
kill switch for your motivation that existsin your brain. Any time you're frustrated,
you feel like you're losing, especiallyin like a game situation, you
(02:35):
feel like a failure, those kindsof things, this is going to turn
on and then it's going to killyour motivation to keep trying. So if
you look at the Super Bowl,the momentum that we talk about, you
know that we all notice as sportsfans, is one team dominating the havenula
and triggering the Havenula of the otherteams, so they feel like they're losing,
so they start to lose their motivationeven slightly, even though they're a
(02:58):
professional athletes. Well, you knowthat's I think I had the opposite perception,
like somehow this was responsible for ourmotivation. So but what you're telling
me is it's the exact opposite.It's the wet blanket on our motivation exactly.
It keeps you from touching the hotstove more than once, so you
protect yourself from risk and harm.But in the case of doing the right
(03:19):
thing and the thing that you wantto do that high performance. It is
your biggest obstacle. You want tokeep it quiet and don't poke the bear
if you were. So, isthis almost like our lizard brain? And
I just had a conversation with anotherguy about mindfulness and purpose and things of
that nature, and he talked aboutyour conscious and your subconscious brain. So
is this the part of the brainthat kept us from being eaten by a
(03:40):
saber tooth tiger? Yeah, itactually kept us from eating the poison bearing
more than once you know, orlearning from our mistakes and also things that
made us sick and ill and riskour lives. That's fascinating to me because
that sort of lends itself to thenotion that at that part of our brain
(04:00):
is almost the institutional knowledge that hasbeen passed down as the human species has
evolved. So how do you knowor how can you there? Is there
purposeful ways that you can kind ofshut that that voice up. Yeah.
So in the case of you know, the super Bowl, you know,
whoever is better at managing their thoughtsof failure is going to win because that's
(04:25):
who the momentum goes to. Andso when we do things in our career,
when we do things in parenting,are healthy eating those kinds of things.
The most important thing is that weeither don't think we failed at something,
or if we do think that wefailed, that we get on that
real quick and reframe it into someother narrative so that we can keep going.
(04:45):
That's that's absolutely fascinating. I so, is this a when I look
at at a brain? Is thislike? I mean, when you look
at it at a brain you cansee the prefrontal cortex and things of that
nature. Can you actually discern thisthis particular part of your brain on an
X ray or an MRI or whatever. I don't know what you used to
look at a brain, but Imean, can you actually see the different
(05:05):
part? Yes, you can,and it lights up when you think you
failed, and if it lights up, it kills your motivation to keep trying
that thing. But of course,as you mentioned, it's subconscious. It's
not like we have a sharp painthat occurs that tells us that this is
lit up. We just think thatwe didn't. We don't have motivation,
and then we blame ourselves and wefeel shamed and we feel like we failed.
(05:29):
Instead of realizing that we just hada failure moment, a failure trigger
that we didn't tend to. Soin theory, if you could shut down
that part of your brain entirely,like disable that part of your brain,
you could create a fearless soldier.You could create a fearless person who felt
(05:49):
no, you know, hesitation abouttrying anything difficult, right, I mean
in theory, yeah, I meanin the negative sense. They've done post
autopsy analyzation of brains that people youknow who overdose on heroin in the UK
(06:10):
and their habiula was shrunken down.So it's actually like it's a brake pedal
in your car. It stops youfrom doing the bad thing, including the
heroin, and when that's worn downor it's shrunk down, then you don't
have breaks. You just go unopposed. And that could be foolish in the
case of addiction, or it couldbe wise in the case of being brave
(06:30):
in your life. So would thatgo at least a little bit towards explaining
why some people have so much troublebreaking the cycle of addiction. They if
they've damaged that part of their brainto the point where they no longer have
a governor that makes a lot ofsense. I mean that that's kind of
illuminating. Yeah, if anybody knowssomebody who's struggled with this disease of addiction,
(06:54):
it looks exactly like that. Itlooks like they don't have any breaks
and they're just going to drive offthe cliff and there's nothing that they can
do for themselves. And that's whyhaving rehab and systems of external people helping
out is really important. That isabsolutely fascinating. Doctor Kyra Bobinett is my
guest. She's got a book aboutthis called Unstoppable Brain. How long have
(07:15):
you been studying this part of theHow did you decide to study this?
Yeah, my first book, WellDesigned Life. I actually was the first
to combine a couple of early studieson habnula action into this failure triggered into
motivation. Loss was clear to meback then, but I was the first
to kind of put those two,you know, peanut butter and chocolate together.
(07:36):
Says about eight years ago or nineyears ago. And since the pandemic,
there has literally been an explosion ofresearch studies on human brain, on
rat brain, all these things thatreally kind of fill out the picture of
how powerful this thing is it's shownto control depression, cause depression, cause
anxiety, cause addiction, cause insomnia, cause overeating. It's everything that I've
(08:01):
ever cared about as a physician tryingto help people get healthy. So are
we at a point now are thereObviously heroin has a negative impact on it,
we've learned that, But are weat a point now with the beginning
of the understanding that we'll be ableto find drugs that specifically act on the
hevenula so you could maybe have somesort of medical treatment for someone who has
(08:24):
a severe addiction issue. Yeah.So far, there's been two studies that
kind of point in that direction.One is that they did a deep brain
stimulation of this area of a verydepressed woman who was not responding to any
other treatment, and they reversed hersymptoms completely. The other one is they
found that ketymine. You know,there's a whole revolution in psychiatry around psychedelic
(08:46):
assistant therapy, and they found thatketymine specifically bonds and absorbs into this part
of the brain and stays there forabout three months, which is about what
you see clinically as sim relief fromdepressions. Well, that is amazing I
mean, it is just I haveto say. It's like I always say,
this is an incredible time to bealive, right, I mean,
(09:09):
because we're learning all of these newthings, and for me, just having
that bit of knowledge of when Ifeel my motivation waning, I can now
say to myself, hemnula's shut up, right, Like, I don't need
to hear from you at this moment. I'm gonna be fine that kind of
stuff. I mean, I knowit sounds silly, but I will use
this. I will absolutely use thisto say I know it's just my habenula
(09:31):
and I need to get over myselfand get moving. Obviously I'm not talking
about people with severe depression and thingsof that nature, but for me personally,
I find this incredibly useful information.Doctor Bobbinette. I really appreciate your
time today and your work. Thankyou so much for having me. All
right, That is doctor Kira Bobinette, And you can find a link on
the blog for her information and herbook. I think I'm gonna buy this
(09:52):
book and read it.
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