How Your Brain Works with Dr. Michael Platt

Dr. Michael Platt, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Platt also shares new science-based tools for improving focus, creativity, and attention.

➡️Connect with Dr. Michael Platt: Website: https://www.drmichaelplatt.com

Book: The Leader's Brain | https://www.drmichaelplatt.com

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About the host:

Bert Martinez is a successful entrepreneur and best-selling author. Bert is fascinated by business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. One of Bert's favorite hobbies is to transform the complicated into simple-to-understand lessons so you can apply them to your business and life. Bert is also obsessed with exploring the mindset of the high achievers, so you can follow their secrets and strategies.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome, Welcome on the show. Today we got doctor Michael Platt.
He is the director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative and
professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author
of The Leader's Brain, and he's going to help people
with today on the show. He's going to be helping
us whether you have a big brain or a small
brain like I do. He's going to give us some

(00:22):
tips to maybe help us with our brain and understanding
that a little bit. Doctor Michael Platt, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey, thanks for having me. It's really great to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
All right. I want to ask you this right off,
because this has been a lifelong thing for you, it
seems like, and so what was the spark or what
was the thing that drew you into neuroscience.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's a great question. I mean I actually started out
in anthropology, so I was you know, it's like very
far from what I do now. But you know, when
I look back, I think what I really wanted to
understand was human nature. So what makes us tick? What
makes some people tick differently than others, some people tick
well together, some people not. What makes us similar or

(01:08):
different from our you know, non human primate cousins, and
so that drew me into anthropology. The kind of the
broadest lens took of those things. But by the time
I was kind of finishing my PhD, where I was
looking at memory systems in two species of monkeys from
South America, I realized if I really wanted to understand it,

(01:29):
I had to understand the brain. So I had to
kind of suck it up and learn a whole new field,
which was difficult. And you did a post doc in
neuroscience at NYU, which is like a second PhD, and
that took me down the path I'm on now in
an ever non linear way.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, you know, I was listening to one of your
interviews and one of the things that you said in
this interview you were discussing good managers versus a managers,
and it may not have been an interview, might have
been just a webinar thing that you did, and and
what I loved about what you said was what makes

(02:10):
a good manager versus a bad manager is our people skills.
And ultimately, you know that is at least one of
the top things that makes you a successful person, successful parent,
successful sibling is that likability and you know there was
a gentleman. Uh shout out to Mark Eviatts. Mark Evitts,

(02:34):
was this just a wonderful individual like by everybody. He
was a litigator, but a very likable guy. And you know,
and I had the chance of clerking with him for
a little bit. But what was so unique about him
He would go into a case completely destroy the other side,

(02:57):
but he did it in such a way that there
was no rancor, there was no there wasn't this this
this hatred or whatever. In about three or four different cases,
the opposing attorney came back like a few months later
and hired him. So talk about you know again, people skills.

(03:19):
I just I just you know, it's it's it's the
at least one of the things to make you a success, right.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, I mean I that that's one of the things
that is deepest part of my own research, which focuses
on decision making, but but in social situations, that that
ability to connect and relate, to shape, to persuade, to lead, right,
And that is those are people's skills. That's social and

(03:48):
emotional intelligence. It doesn't mean you're the most domineering or
the loudest. It means that you actually you know, first
and foremost, pay attention to other people. And when you
pay attention to that, it turns out that you can
learn something about them. You can learn what they need,
what they might want, what they're good at, what they're
not good at, what they need help with. And if

(04:10):
you follow that thread, you know, then you can help
them to to acquire those skills, help them to find
their place, help them to connect with you, with the company,
with their fellow employees. And the data is very clear
on this, which is that you know, companies that do that,

(04:31):
that create a culture of connection, just do better financially,
they do better. I mean, but that's the ultimate outcome.
If you're a CEO and you don't care about the
people who work for you or the culture, and I
think you should just you know, because they are people.
But look at the bottom line, I mean, that's you know,
you can you can think we can get rid of management,

(04:54):
go founder mode. You know, we don't need all these
people kind of you know, helping to relate to and
get the employees to contribute. But it's the bottom line.
You know, your company is just not going to do
as well if you don't treat your work as well.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, absolutely, And interestingly enough, I think it was I
was text messaging with Mark Cuban and we were talking
about the exacts, this exact same thing that that at
least in Shark Tank, and I think this is probably

(05:33):
true in all investment scenarios. Eighty percent of the reason
that people invest in that company is because the likability
and the belief that they have in that CEO. So
if they don't like you, well, they're not going to invest.
And if they don't believe that you can do what
you say you can do, they're not going to invest.

(05:54):
So that again, people skills, you know, to your to
your point of it being a you know, a financial
benefit is right there. I mean something as simple as investings.
Yeah you can, you can make logic on paper and
everything looks good. But if they don't like it, you
don't have the people skills, you don't have the leadership skills,
you're not going to get the money.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
And it's amazing how quickly we can recognize that. So
you know that, and you know, I think that reflects
the fact that we are endowed with this very specialized
network in our brain's a circuit that is dedicated to

(06:36):
to managing our moment to moment interactions with other people
and our long term relationships. So it's a it's a
key part of what it means to be human and
it's a key feature in our success. And to get
back to that shark tank example, which I really love,
because we ran a study actually using neuroscience to value

(07:00):
eight the pitches of founders on shark tanks. So we
had people wearing brainwave monitoring devices, which gives us moment
to moment signals without interrupting the you know, the pitch
to say, Okay, what do you think now? Or turn
your applausemeter to the right or to the left, just
just watch the pitch. And then we had access to

(07:20):
data on okay, did they get a deal and how
much money did they get? And we we could predict
whether they're going to get a deal or not within
eight seconds. So I talk about the first impressions that
like what do you lead with? What your you know,
how charismatic are you? You know? Do you light up

(07:40):
the room? So that was number one, and then we
looked at another signal that reflects kind of the conversion
of the entire audience, if you will, all the investors
to the same kind of train of thought, which is
their brainwaves synchronized. And it was amazing because what you

(08:02):
say is that build up as the story is told,
and then it would peak right at the end with
the ask, and that predicted how much money they would get,
literally like with ninety some percent accuracy. But to that point,
first impressions really do matter, you know, for good and
for bad.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Absolutely, it is this research, research by chance, available for
reading or so it's.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
It's in the process of being published, but we did
put a preprint out there so you can go get it.
You just google it with my name and you'll find it.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Okay, great, I look forward to that. That that is amazing.
It kind of reminds me of a study by doctor
John Gott where he did thousands and thousands of couples.
He's a marriage therapist, him and his wife, and you know,
he got to the point that almost the same thing

(08:57):
because he had hooked up people to devices and he
said he could predict within a certain level of certainty,
within like ninety percent, whether this couple could make it
or not based on that data. So it's you know,
amazingly important. Let me ask you this though again you've
been studying the brain for a long time, and what

(09:18):
has neuroscience taught you about being human?

Speaker 2 (09:24):
That's really interesting because you know, I spent half of
my let's say, half of my days studying human brains
and half of my days studying monkey brains. And you know,
monkey brains and human brains are essentially the same brain.
So there's a little monkey in all of us. I
always like to say, you can think of the human
brains as an inflated monkey brain with a language module.

(09:47):
So most of the core processing routines, you know, hardware
and software that's in our heads is very old, so
it's you know, thirty forty million years old. It operates
the same in a you know, in a Reese's monkey
as it does in human Yeah, of course it's tuned
up a bit more in us and can do a

(10:09):
bit more. That's really interesting because that that tells us
sort of underneath this layer, the superficial layer of our
conscious ability to kind of talk to ourselves and relate
to other people what we think is going on in
our heads, there's this underlying operating system that is really

(10:30):
really ancient.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
And that.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Guides our behavior, our moment to moment behavior and also
constrains our behavior, So there are limits. Our brains are
not computers. Our brains are more like Swiss army knives
with specific tools for specific jobs. Those are ancient tools,
and you kind of can't override them, or not very easily.
So learning the rules or the tools that our brains

(11:00):
buy is really important because then you can navigate try
to optimize around them. It is the reason that story
that I just told you is the reason, honestly that
we're so miserable, I think so much of the time
because we make mistakes, right or why did I buy
that thing that I didn't want? Or why did I
buy that product just because it was advertised by so

(11:20):
and so celebrity? Right, that shouldn't matter at all, Right,
But but we're I don't want to say hardwired, but
it's but a lot of these a lot of things
are deeply baked in and and very difficult to override.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Now do you think it's baked in because of our environment,
meaning our parents and our in our siblings and in
our peer group. Because again I'm looking at my grandkids
and they're these absolute perfect being and and you know

(11:57):
they forgive so easily, and and and and and they
really just don't care about anything other than can we play? Right?
I mean, that's their main thing. But then I start,
you know, thinking about as you get older, there's a point,
whether it's maybe at the end of elementary school or
beginning of junior high when you start realizing, wow, we're different,

(12:18):
and and then that I think that's when that self
criticism kicks in. Your thoughts on that, Well.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
There's a lot there to unpack. So you know, who
we are right as adults reflects obviously what you've got
from your parents, your genetic endowment, and then your experiences
as you've grown up and the things that you like
to do and don't like to do. The things that
you like to do getting strengthened, and the things that

(12:49):
you don't like to do kind of getting weaker. It is, yeah,
I mean, young kids haven't made they don't really realize it,
but you know, it's like evolution has endowed that period
of life with the prioritization of play. And play again

(13:09):
is not uniquely human. You see play obviously in dogs
and in monkeys and whatnot, and it's a you know,
it's it's obviously useful because that's and hone skills, but
without much risk of you know, of getting hurt, and
you know, test the world and and learn about the

(13:30):
physics of the world and learn about the physics of
other people, you know, if you will. What's a little
bit unusual is that you know, we still play as adults, right,
so that we we could all I think do with
more play. Honestly, I think, uh, you know, all work
and no play makes everybody adult person, and you kind

(13:53):
of I'm not getting a little off topic, but kind
of when I think back to what we've been discussing
with regard to the workplace and and culture, et cetera,
that that kind of playfulness and having fun is uh
is really important for making work not just tolerable, but

(14:13):
for you to kind of engage learning and also to
engage connection with other people. So, you know, when we
don't have that levity, when we don't have play, that
makes that a lot harder. Where does self criticism come from?
I don't know. I mean, it's like, it's not obviously

(14:36):
if you're if you're, if you're yeah, let's let's back
that back up, so we know that's not very healthy.
I mean a little bit of you know, awareness about
right you things, maybe what you did and why you
did and how to correct that. That's obviously important, but
but really dwelling on that and focusing on that like

(14:59):
a you know, I think a lot people do that.
That just that's a recipe for for you know, no
fun and and and low performance. Honestly, so I advocate
practicing a lot of self care and you know, and
and being kind to yourself, you know, just as much

(15:19):
as you'd be kind to another person.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Absolutely, And I'm a big I'm a big believer that
sometimes you have to love people from afar. You know,
you can't do anything about your family. But if you know,
if you're in a situation where you know, whatever you
want to call it, it's an abusive environment or you know,
toxic environment, they're they're not they're not lack of better

(15:46):
to use your vernacular, they're not being kind to you,
they're being overly critical of you. Then it might be
somebody that you need less of and gravitate towards people
who are more supportive and and I think it's easy
for all of us to criticize, criticize ourselves to the
point where we don't want to crawl out a bit
and you know, like you were saying, hey, it's good

(16:07):
to look at something and say, oh, you know what,
I you know, I could have done this a little
bit better, whatever, whatever, and try again. But I think
that for the most part, yeah, I agree with you.
We're so hard on ourselves, and if you were to
talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves,

(16:28):
you wouldn't have any friends.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
I think also, I mean, I haven't thought about this deeply,
but I wonder to what extent this also reflects, you know,
the modern environment, these sort of western educated, industrial, rich
democratic environment in older times, or if you go visit

(16:54):
with people who live a lifestyle, it's more similar to
what humans spent most of their evolutionary career and essentially
small group societies, not a lot of wealth, inequality, people
physically active, you know, out in nature for example. You know,

(17:17):
you don't get a lot of sense from all my anthropologies.
You don't get a major sense that people are super
self critical under those conditions. You know, I think that
people are generally, they're pretty happy, they know what their
role is. Everybody has a part to play. Expectations are

(17:37):
not very high until you know you're maybe in your
mid twenties or later that you're actually going wider you know,
otherwise before that and also in later age you're a
net negative, you know in terms of you know, calories
and energy. But that's but that's just expected, right, that's
just the nature of being human being. Whereas you know

(18:01):
and in you know here where we are, for example,
there's a lot of expectations. It's a massive society, you know,
with now as hyper connected. None of these none of
these things are the conditions and you know for which
our brains are designed with abundant evidence that some people

(18:25):
are have a lot more than you do, which our
brains are exquisitely tuned into and really hate and so
and and and where to to get what we need
and beyond that, you know, it takes a lot of work,
so for for a long period of time, and and

(18:49):
you know, a correllary to that is that we're doing
so often as individuals, not as a as a community.
So all that is to say, that's not what our
brains were designed for. And I think that's why our brains,
i e. Us, why we are often so miserable, because

(19:12):
it just really doesn't compute. It's just does not compute.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, especially especially I think when you've been at you know,
you've been trying to reach a certain goal for a while,
and it seems like everybody else is passing you by,
and you're doing the same work, but you're not getting
the same results. Right, whether it's in the gym or
the office or with the kids. It's so easy to go, wait,
it's not making any sense. I'm eating the same thing,

(19:43):
I'm doing the same workouts. But you know it is
It is funny how our brain just just, I guess,
just does an automatic comparison sometimes.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh that you know, talk about ancient heritage in our brains.
I mean, virtually all primate societies are structured strongly by status,
and having higher status affords you access to more or

(20:16):
better resources and so much so. And this is interesting
because it's a theory that is panned out, you know,
going back to the nineteen sixties. But now think about
this in their current environment. The attention structure of primate
societies is completely organized by power, by status. So everybody

(20:40):
looks at the most dominant individual most and they feel
all of that attention and gaze on them. Boy, who
does that sound like? You know, what does that sound
like in our current environment. So for us, it's just
you know, the volume knob is turned up even higher.
And I think the thing that is so really pernicious

(21:01):
and challenging right now is that because of social media,
because of the Internet, we're bombarded with this information, right
so those those bells are going off in our heads,
you know, a thousand times a day, and and that's
just I think that's just really really hard, Like it's

(21:22):
it's hard to accept, and it's you eventually see what
dozen hundreds, I don't know, thousands of people who are
doing better than you, and absolutely either that makes you
feel like you've got to work harder or you've got
to get more somehow draw attention or drop out.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Right, all right, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, all right. I want
to talk a little bit about your book again, it's
The Leader's Brain. It's available on Amazon or or wherever
you get your favorite books. But in your book you
explore what sets exceptional leaders apart from I guess the
non exceptional. So what's happening in the brain when someone

(22:09):
I guess we look up to or someone who inspires others.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Well, there's a lot there, there's a lot to unpack
and in the book, I actually unpack it in different
like different components, Like so there's a you know, I
think the social emotional intelligence, which we've already talked about
is is key, you know, and that that kind of
soft skill is often until very recently, I think overlooked

(22:35):
or or thought was less important than other skills like
making good decisions, and that's you know, that's a very power.
Everybody has to be able to do that. But I
think for a leader, you know, obviously even more important communication.
You know, you could say that's part of social emotional intelligence,

(22:56):
but the ability to communicate effectively and clearly and to
do so in a way that where people actually listen
to you, right that And and so I'm kind of
listing what these things are, but you know, we do
understand where they come from in the brain. Being innovative,
being creative and out of the box thinker. Uh, you know,

(23:17):
we understand where all of these all of these faculties
live in the brain, and we know what sets you know,
one individual part from another right to kind of like
what the way I always describe it is I like
to describe it is if you're an audiophile, and you
know we're similar age so so we familiar with analog systems.

(23:40):
They're coming back now. But you you may have had
a an equalizer right where you take the signal that's
coming out or your phonograph, it's amplified and you put
an equalizer, and it's got these sliders or knobs for
different frequencies low tones, medium tones, high tones, so you
can turn up the ball or down in any of those,

(24:01):
and certain kinds of music sound better, you know, like
you know, black sound is going to sound better one
way with the settings one way then mozart right, And
so the brain is essentially an equalizer. Okay, So you've
got a bunch of sliders or knobs in your brain
that are for these different faculties like decision making, from

(24:23):
being very risk averse to you know, to to risk seeking,
or from you know, for social skills, from being let's
just call it very introverted to very extroverted, or from
being very good at getting stuff done to being very
out of the box thinker, and on and on. And
each person's sliders are set a little bit differently and

(24:47):
kind of the optimal settings for any job, right we
that's one of the things we're trying to figure out
what are the optimal settings, and then where are you
and then how do we get your sliders into the
closest alignment with that job. And some of those sliders
are are easy to move and some are very sticky

(25:07):
and very difficult to move. So when we think about leaders,
so a leader, they can be born and made, you know,
so you can be born with your your it just
happens that you're equalizer in your brain is set perfectly
very unlikely, or you have had the experiences and you've
worked on moving some of those knobs right into positions

(25:33):
that make you a more effective leader. So you're more charismatic,
you are you know, are a better coach, You're a
better mentor you make more thoughtful decisions. You you know,
you're a bit more innovative, uh, you know than than

(25:54):
other people. So all of that can then crystallize into
you know, being an effective leader.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, I like that. You know. One of the other
things that I've been studying a lot lately is empathy,
And I wanted to get your take on this because
how does empathy show up in the brain and how
do we how do the best leaders use that that
empathy to connect or control or instead of control, I

(26:27):
should say, just to connect and build trust, talk about
the importance of empathy ideas.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
That's a that's a great question. So empathy emerges from
this social brain network that I already described, and which
is you can think of the social brain network like this.
It's sort of the pixelated data that's coming in through
your senses, like your eyes, is reassembled in the back
of the head into images, and then that data is

(26:54):
flowing forward in this social brain network, and as it
goes forward, more sophisticated computations are performed on that data. So, oh,
there's a person there, Oh they're young, they're old, familiar, unfamiliar.
And then there's one stream that's a little lower in
the head, in one branch that starts trying to figure

(27:15):
out what the other person might be feeling based on
facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, pupil diameter, or things
were not really even consciously aware of. Ultimately, that will
land somewhere in the front, like at the intersection of
my fingers, which is where empathy lives. And we know
that the more activity you have there, the likely you

(27:38):
would be to help somebody who needs help. And then
there's another kind of cognitive branch, if you will, that
is tasked with the cognitive part of empathy, like figuring
out what somebody might be thinking, what they want, what
they're paying attention to, it's important to them, and then
those things come together. What's really interesting about this whole
system is well, first of all, the gateway to empathy

(28:04):
is paying attention. Okay, you know, if you are looking
at your phone, especially if you're looking at your phone
under the table, under the desk, there's not a lot
of an empathy empathy that's going to blow, you know,
because you're just not paying attention. What you're paying attention.
You know, when you pay attention, that gets data into
the system. The more attention you pay than the thing,

(28:24):
the more it's amplified. But this then raises some really
interesting a lot of things have been observed that are
super interesting, and that's where neuroscience gets really powerful because
there is often a disconnect between what you say you
feel and what your brain tells us. So kind of
classic studies done showing bias toward other people who are

(28:51):
not like the people that you grew up with. So
if I you know, this is one of my former
post ONCS did these studies where he had created videos
of women who whose face was being pierced with the needle.
It's it looks painful, right, And he could have people
in the videos who were women in the videos who
were Caucasian or ethnically Chinese, et cetera. And then he

(29:13):
would show the videos to people and he was scanning
their brains and he could say, you know, tell me,
you know how how much pain you feel for that
person empathy And everybody said they felt exactly the same.
It didn't matter who the person was, but their brain
is total totally different stories. So it really so the
brain empathy signal was like massive for somebody who looked

(29:34):
like you, you know, for me, it would be for you know,
for a Caucasian woman. But then I would say, yeah,
I feel the same way for you know, this ethnic
the Chinese woman, and there would be very little brain
empathy and and vice versa. So this has been shown
many times now, and it's really interesting because that is
that is you know, that's that's just this implicit or

(29:56):
unconscious bias that we show up with if we're not
being very attention intentional and and paying attention. Now, why
is it there is it because people are evil? Not?
It has nothing to do with that. I mean, some
people are evil. But what the reason why is because
our brains, like all brains on the planet, learn who
we are the tribe to which we belong by the

(30:19):
statistical frequency of interaction with other people. So this has
made very clear. This is in the book and a
series of studies done out of a University of Chicago
on rats. So rats show empathy. A rat will work
to help another rat who's trapped in a little tube

(30:40):
for example. He has to work and he has to
press these little levers to get them out of there.
But and that helping behavior, which is a form of empathy,
depends on the same the same part of the brain,
isn't us So if you shut it off, rat doesn't
help anybody. But who rat helps depends on who they
grew up with. So a white rat raised with white

(31:01):
rats will help a white rat, but not a black rat. Interesting,
a white rat raised with black rats will help a
black rat and not a white rat. And if they're
raised with mixed group of black and white rats, they
help everybody. So that's super interesting because what that tells
us is that I mean, I mean diversity is a
goal in its own right, but it's also strategy to

(31:21):
build empathy, to build brains that are very inclusive, right,
that welcome everybody in to the conversation, if you will. So,
getting back to leaders, I think what's really interesting is
that there are multiple studies demonstrating that as people ascend

(31:47):
a higher king you know, that can be self rated
or based on your peers or even socioeconomic status. The
higher you go, the lower your social brain network activity.
So it's kind of like the boss who shows up
in the office and doesn't talk to the you know,
the cleaning staff or the you know, the the administrative staff, right,

(32:10):
they only talk to the other high you know, high
ranking people. And I think that that's a big lesson
for for leaders and people who want to be leaders.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
No, we had a.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Little who slowed down there. We have to be a
leader who pays attention to other people. You have to
be a leader who inquires with other people, right, a
leader who you know, who really does focus on on everybody.
And uh, you know, one way to do that is

(32:49):
to flatten the any kind of cues they are to
to to hierarchy, right to status. So you know, like
like I don't know if you've worked with sorry pilicopter
going overhead. So like in medicine, the length of the

(33:12):
white coat that a doctor wears tells you their seniority.
So really with the white coat all the way to
the floor, they're the one who has all the power,
and the interns have the tiny, little short ones that
barely you know, go pass through your end. So that
is a cue that you know, reinforces who listens to whom,

(33:33):
and that can lead to mistakes right in you know,
in in treatment because maybe you know, maybe an intern
notices something, knows something new that you know, the sort
of you know, the the chief, you know, resident that
does not. So there's and there's another really interesting example

(33:55):
of this, which which I saw in my own two
dot two eyes when I was in Brazil in San
Paulo earlier this year, and I was visiting with BTG,
which is Brazil's largest bank, and they do more than banking,
they do investment and all this stuff. And what was
really cool is you go basically everybody in the entire

(34:20):
who works there. I was working on one floor and
all their desks are together. The CEO is right in
the middle of it. Right, He's got his desk just
like everybody else's desk. And you know, you see that
in the way the CEO shows up and the way
that people relate to each other is a very very
equal environment. I thought it was super cool.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
That's very cool. In fact, again, it reminds me of
something that Mark Cuban said when he took over the Mavericks.
That's what he did. He put his desk right in
the middle and he was dialing and calling the what
do you call it, the season ticket holders like everybody
else was because he wanted everybody to see, hey, I'm
I'm invested to right. I didn't just buy it, I'm

(35:01):
I'm I want I want it to be successful. And
then I had another friend of mine who who did
the same thing. He runs a very profitable, very uh
big kind of an office supply type of business. And
he's not sitting in a fancy office. He's got the
fancy office when he needs to have a meeting, but

(35:24):
he's front and center there in the bullpen, just like
everybody else. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
No, I mean, I mean that's the way my LAMB
runs too, is I'm generally out there with everybody, and
often when people come into the lab, they see that
I'm doing the dishes and I'm wiping down the cleabels,
and as partially because I'm a neat freak, but but uh, yeah,
I mean it's not it's not beneath me by any means.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Let me ask you this, what is your take? Since
since we've been talking about uh and I'm kind of
switching around a little bit, we talked a little bit
of about criticism and self criticism, what is your take
on social media from a neuroscience perspective.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think the data to me is
crystallizing and crystallizing along the lines of I think what
we all feared about it. So social media is really
the first very simple AI that was unleashed on the

(36:32):
planet in an uncontrolled experiment. It's a form of AI
that gives you more of what you click on, right
what either makes you super happy or makes you super
pissed off. And you know, so it's gamified and it
just it just is working on dopamine hits. Really, so

(36:56):
it's just like bang bang bang putting that in the
hands of children, you know, basically in twenty ten whatever
a little after that, So when iPhones came out and
then people are getting on Facebook. That seems to have
been a bad idea. So we do know that, first
of all, there's a correlation between when you know, Facebook

(37:21):
got introduced on this campus or that campus, and within
weeks mental health problems are you know, going up. That
seems to be very very clear. There have been quasi
you know, those are sort of like quasi experiments, and
we're now seeing i think finally led by Jonathan Height,

(37:44):
I think it's been a very articulate advocate for the
no I'm thinking about kids right now, but for at
least delaying when they get access and can actually be
on social media, because it appears to be you know,
it's like we wouldn't we have. We have age limits

(38:06):
for alcohol and tobacco, and they you know, they're kind
of harnessing the same circuitry for real. Those drugs do
so directly social reinforcement, social kind of that social addiction,
if you will. It doesn't operate directly on it, but

(38:28):
it hits the same stuff, right And we're, as we
already discussed, we are so dialed in to other people,
what other people are doing and what other people are
getting that it is it's almost impossible to override, right,
It is really really hard. And so it's you know,

(38:51):
as part of our success as a species, are wiring
to connect with other people. But obviously in this case,
I think it's being you know, hijacked for for ill
rather than than than for good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Absolutely. A matter of fact, what my family, uh, what
we started doing is started leaving the social media environment
in and we have a WhatsApp family group where you know,
it doesn't have doesn't have all the other junk, but
we still get you can still see what who we
really want to see because at the end of the day,

(39:30):
you might have a million followers, but only a handful
of those are really important.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
To you, right.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
And uh and and I think even more, uh, I
think a lot of companies are just using it as
another marketing platform, right, meaning they're not posting a bunch
of personal stuff they're they're they're using it to highlight
their value. And I think that's great. Uh and uh.
But yeah, I I think that it's interesting that you

(40:02):
say that that you know, it's this dopamine hit and
I've seen it. I can't believe I did this, But
one day I was scrolling till like three o'clock in
the morning and then when I realized how late it was. Okay, man,
this is ridiculous, and I just I can't believe I
did this to myself. And to make it worse, I
finally go to sleep and I'm having a dream about scrolling.

(40:29):
All right, that's enough of that. And so it is
such a It is such a I don't know, kind
of an evasive, invasive type of of like you said, Ai, right,
and it really we've seen it do a lot of
harm and I'm shocked. I'll go someplace, you know, store

(40:52):
or the mall or whatever, and you see these parents
and their children are being given a tablet or a
phone at an exceptionally young age in my opinion, you know,
four or five year olds and stuff like that, and
sometimes even younger. And I just feel like saying, what
are you doing? What do you do? Except like you're

(41:13):
going to kill your child? And I think that that
social media. Come to your point, we regulate tobacco and
liquor and beer. I think we need to regulate social media.
And look, I'm a capitalist. I want as little government
interference as possible. But there are some things that that
we as humans cannot regulate, and I think social media

(41:36):
is one of them.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, totally agree. I uh well, I do think we're
starting to see the tide turn on this, and we're
seeing increasing numbers of schools and states and countries that
are you know, banning, for example, banning smartphones in the classroom,

(41:59):
which I think is it's a great first step.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Absolutely absolutely all right. So I kind of want to
come back to, you know, the other train of thought.
When we were talking about leadership and things of that nature,
we talked about empathy. I want to bring up trust
because I'm a big believer that whether it's you know,
no matter what you're selling, you're ultimately selling trust. And

(42:25):
what does neuroscience reveal about how trust is built and
or broken?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah, well it goes back to that social brain network
that we've been circling around, so that that's the foundation
of trust. Trust lives within that system, that circuitry. So
everything we talked about for empathy is relevant here. I mean, again,

(42:53):
I can't emphasize this enough, and it is one of
the embarrassing kind of admit that I have, which is
I spent you know, several decades studying the brain and
then I have to say yeah, And what it told
me is that when my grandparents taught me and my
parents taught me is true, which is, you know, you
need to pay attention to the people. If you want
to gain somebody's trust, you're not going to gain it

(43:16):
by looking at your phone or staring out the window
or not you know, talking to them. I know it
sounds simple, but so many people violate that step one.
You know, Step two is is actually having meaningful give
and take right. So so for conversation, for example, real

(43:38):
conversation is a great way to build trust. When you're
telling your story and you're hearing somebody else tell their story,
you're a little vulnerable. That vulnerability somehow our social brains
detect that, and that that helps to build trust. And
then ultimately there is this biomarker of trust, a biological marker,

(44:01):
which is the degree to which two brains synchronize their activity. So,
you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier,
and you talked about couples and being able to predict
whether their marriage was going to you know, stay intact
or fall apart, and the key marker for that is synchrony.

(44:23):
So when you have when you click with somebody, your
best friend or your your spouse or whatever it might be,
you know, and you finish each other's sentences, et cetera.
It's like literally, what's happening is your brains are synchronizing
and activity. So the pattern of activity in one brain
is similar to the patern activity the other, and the
tighter they are, the closer you are, and that's a

(44:45):
marker of trust, cooperation, communication, teamwork, and on and on.
Because it can actually amplify and ripple into more than
two people, so it can be multiple people, as we've seen.
When there's when brains begin to synchronize, also percolates to

(45:06):
our bodies, so our hearts, beats can synchronize together, our breathing,
our movements. And what's cool about that is you can
run it in reverse too, so moving together, it begins
to synchronize physiology. So why do you think people, you know,

(45:28):
why do you think they march together in the military
when you know, go to boot camp. Because building trust
through synchrony. Every culture on the planet has synchrony building
rituals and activities, So singing, dancing, drumming, all of those
rhythmic activities that you do together, chanting, that synchronizes brain activity,

(45:50):
and we you know, that leads to all these good things. Trust, cooperation.
It's the glue that that keeps us together. And there
are ways to dial that up, paying attention, eye contact,
having a good conversation, singing, chanting, moving together, all those things,
you know, and then there are ways of turning it down,

(46:12):
not paying it, not not moving together, and and on
and on and on. And what's really powerful about this
observation is that now we have a quantitative brain based metric, right,
that is a it's a trust meter, right, so or

(46:35):
you know, we can tell how much trust is there,
and that's a forecast that can forecast how good your
working relationship is going to be, tell us about tells
us something about, you know, how whether you're going to
negotiate fairly and you know and and you know have
a good deal. Right, And so that's a that for me.

(46:56):
And we're using this all the time in the laboratory
and now in in in work we do with companies
because you know, now we now it's not a squishy
concept psychological safety or something like that. It's like it's
a it's a real thing, right.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
That you can measure, you know, It kind of reminded
me one of my favorite built in programs that most
humans have is the ability to pick up on feelings

(47:38):
or some you know, something's off right. And in other words,
you might be talking to somebody who appears to be trustworthy.
They're addressed the part and they're saying all the right words,
but again you're getting that there's something off right, and
it's one of those things that that is just an
inherent i don't know, gift or an emotion that we

(47:59):
can pay up. Wait a minute, this guy or this person,
this female is saying all the right things, but yet
my trust you know, my my BS meter is going
off and my trust meter is going down the opposite direction.
I just find that fascinating. And does neuroscience explain that

(48:20):
as well?

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Well? So it is again I'll come back to this.
This is a function of this social brain network, which
is obviously there to do things like promote trust and
cooperation to learn from others, but also as a BS meter,
So it's your when your spidy sense is going off
that somebody's not telling the truth even though they don't

(48:44):
look visibly you know, like you know, like nervous or
anything that's what's going on, and there are subtle cues
to that. Right. So, you know we talked about facial expressions.
The only reason we have have these muscles to make
facial expressions is to tell somebody else brain what's going
on in your brain. But some of those muscles are

(49:05):
only movable due to pure emotion, the emotional parts of
your brain, and some you can move voluntarily fake it
a little bit. So that's the difference between a good
actor and a bad actor. Right. So you know a
bad actor is faking it. You can tell because they're
not actually feeling it. You know. That's that's like what

(49:26):
I coach every people all the time on is you
you've got to actually feel it. You've got to some
you know, otherwise it looks artificial and other people will
be like, there's something wrong there. Now. Trust is really
interesting because again talk about ancient biological heritage. What count

(49:49):
like even in what some what somebody looks like has
an effect on whether we trust them or There are
people who we say, oh, you have a very trust
trustworthy face and open face and honest. People tell me
that all the time. They're always asked me for directions
no matter what city I'm in whether I've ever been
there before, but remarkably, monkeys, for example, prefer to look

(50:12):
at human faces that other humans have judged to be
more trustworthy. Interesting. So it's like there's something deep there,
right that you know, that that that we don't understand.
But again that that that I think reflects some really
ancient wiring.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
That's that's interesting that it crosses a species like that.
All Right, one of my I get one of the
things that I've kind of studied, and I've come to
this conclusion that that that emotion or emotional intelligence is

(50:54):
is something that sometimes we overlook, right, And in my opinion,
it's extremely important. In fact, it's it's probably, if not
the most important thing, it's one of the most important things.
And so I'm saying all this because in the marketing world,
in the sales world, there's this huge I call it
a myth that people buy on emotion, but they justify

(51:18):
with logic. In my hypothesis is logic doesn't really exist.
I mean, logic is another form of emotion. I mean
there's real logic in the sense that you can go
one plus one equals two, and here's some computer code
that needs to be put in a logical sequence for
it to operate. But you know, bottom line is just

(51:40):
because we know something. We know smoking is bad for us,
but people smoke all the time. Right. We know that
drinking and driving is not a good thing, but people
do that all the time. So knowing something and feeling
something is two different things. And so I wanted to
get your take on is emotion and logic Are they

(52:01):
kind of the same or are they they? You know?
Are you? Are you one of the Do you believe
that logic is different than emotions? What's your take on
the whole logic emotion thing.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Let's let's let's we'll change the terms a little bit.
So people are probably or maybe familiar with this idea
of like emotional versus rational. You know, people often divide
the brain up into so called system one and system too.
You know, emotion one is fast and intuitive and the

(52:34):
rational one is deliberative and slow. And it definitely feels
like that's what's going on, but it's not really how
the brain is organized. You know, it's it's it's it's
one big system for making decisions. There's no hard and
fast cut off. And emotion is a very important part

(52:55):
of that because that provides motivational tone, intivational coloring. For Like,
so you're taking in evidence from the world, and you're
comparing that with stored information, both that from your own
experience and from what your species experienced and your you know,
your ancestors before that that's kind of deeply baked in,

(53:16):
and that that kind of emotional part helps to shade
those decisions so that they might be a little faster
and also so that they stand a generally high likelihood
of making things a little bit better for you, you know,
the outcome, like you feel a little bit better and

(53:37):
you're less likely to feel worse. But it doesn't always
work that way, right, And I think that again we're
coming back around to that our brains are not designed
for this world part of this. So that's you know,
where consequences can be massive and delayed and interact in

(53:57):
complex ways with the environment. So you know, obviously our
brains didn't evolve in people who had access to four
thousand pound pickup trucks and you know, and and ever clear,
you know grain alcohol.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Hey, okay, so I want to ask you about willpower
because again this is one of those things that you know,
discipline is important, and certainly willpower can be helpful, but
how how are we wired for willpower and trying to
reach a goal?

Speaker 2 (54:35):
Is that?

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Is that? In other words, is will power a real
thing as opposed to just being disciplined and motivated? What
is the I guess the neuroscience perspective on willpower?

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Well, you know, I would say that a couple of
those words that you concepts you throughout are basically the
same thing. So willpower, delayed, gratification, discipline, you know, grit,
if you will, those I think more or less mean

(55:08):
the same things. And that's what that means is that
there's a there's there's an element of slowing down, slowing
down the processing and allowing these sort of delayed signals

(55:30):
to have enough time to influence the decision. So meaning
a delayed signal about like, oh this could affect me,
you know, my credit rating ten years from now, rather
than you know, I just want to buy that that
expensive gold jewelry you know right now or something like
that because it looks.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Really cool, you know, right, I have to have that
for coverage sync.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Exactly. Now, there's two other pieces to this that I
would like to address. I mean, one is that in
fact the part of that willpower system. There is part
of the brain that is implicated in decision making and
also in depression, uh and thinking outside the box to

(56:16):
a certain degree. That in in in studies where that
we're that have been done on patients who are having
brain surgery to uh, you know, to to figure out
what might where a source of seizures might be and
remove that if you apply electrical stimulation to this part
of the brain, which is in the the anterior singular
cortexas up here people and people are awake during these

(56:40):
surgeries so that you know, they can report on you know,
their their feelings and they can demonstrate they can still
speak when you stimulate their people say things like I
feel like I'm climbing a mountain and nothing can stop
me from getting to the top. I mean, so they're
expressing this like incredible determination and will and they really

(57:02):
feel it. So in a sense, there's that seems like
it's key to the source right of that that drive
and determination. So that's one thing. The second is that
my you know, nine out of ten dentists, nine out

(57:23):
of ten neuroscientists will tell you that or will agree
with the statement that you know, consciousness, which is related
to will and volition. The consciousness itself is an after thought,
you know, an after effect, like it comes in after
you made the decision, it comes in after you engaged

(57:45):
in the action. It's sort of a report back on
it that is not not actually efficacious, it's not the
thing that's doing. So the little voice is sort of
more like an interpretation of what happened rather than being
a driver. Still very controversial, very hard to measure, but

(58:10):
I think I would say nine out of ten neuroscientists
would endorse that that view.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
All right, I want to talk about chemistry. I think
you call it the chemistry of influence and how that
affects us or how our brain responds when we feel
seen or heard or validated. Talk about your thoughts on this.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Well, First of all, like, are so many six billion
neurons in our brains give or take one hundred trillion connections.
How many neurons and how many connections goes down as
you get older unfortunately, And then dozens and dozens of
chemicals which are neurotransmitters that are the signaling molecules where

(59:03):
one neuron talks to another or to many other neurons,
and some of these chemicals, like they transmit a message
that's very brief, and some linger around for a long time.
So like hormones or peptide hormones are signalers that last

(59:24):
a long time. So like oxytocin, for example, in vasi
pressin which are involved in social interactions, can kind of
have a lasting effect. And when we talk about feeling seen,
you know, or having a close psychological connection with someone,
even making eye contact, that is related to the release

(59:47):
of oxytocin, somebody patting you on the shoulder, and that
oxytocin makes us feel good, it reduces anxiety, and it
also makes us more attentive to to the other person,
makes us better at reading their emotions, more cooperative, et cetera,
et cetera. Uh, And so I think that that that's

(01:00:08):
part of that right and a shorter term timescale other
chemicals would be involved. So we talked about dope meine already,
Dopamine is the great motivator, if you will, so you know,
you get a dope mean pulse wind. Something turned out
to be unexpectedly good, unexpectedly better than you know than

(01:00:31):
it was before. And that's why we go back for
it says, hey, whatever you did, do that again because
it made things better, right, And oh, by the way,
if they keep keep getting better like that, then we
should be optimistic. It's a good time to buy you.

(01:00:52):
It's like world is getting better, right, and the opposite
is if it's going the other way. So that happens
when most of us, you know, for most people social
you know, social reward is is a reward, right. It
drives that dopamine system, So it's good dopamine, oxytocin, vasa

(01:01:13):
press and and other chemicals will be engaged as well,
but those are going to be the the key ones.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I want to I want to kind of touch on
this a little bit. Uh, there is tons of stuff
on the internet about different food or drinks you know
that that might help our brains. Do you subscribe to
any of those things? Are there certain foods that you
would eliminate, certain foods that you would have more of?

(01:01:45):
Do you Is there a supplement out there that you
think is really good for our brain that we're not consuming.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
That's a great question. It's like it's like we're on
many Humman lab now. So it's well, first of all,
your brain needs calories to run, so it eats about
twenty percent of the calories you consume. So you do
need calories for your brain. That said, we need protein

(01:02:16):
for our brains in particular, especially after the overnight fast.
When we after you know, waking up and you haven't anything,
your brain has to assemble some of these chemicals from
amino acids which are found in protein, so dopamine, you know, nora, benefrin, serotonin,
all these things. So there's some really interesting studies showing that,

(01:02:42):
like if you eat a high car breakfast, then you
end up in you know, dopamine deficit for example, which
is a prescription for low motivation, poor learning, bad decision making,
and also some strained social interaction. So I always recommend
having a high protein breakfast in particular. I think that

(01:03:07):
that's critical. If we get into the other realm of
like supplements, it's very controversial, and you know, I, you know,
I mean, I certainly use a lot of supplements, but
I you know, I don't know that I should be
endorsing them on this show.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Well, so you know, again there's just so many companies
out there saying, hey, this will improve you know, concentration,
this will improve focus, or I guess concentration focus the
same thing. But you know, there's one that's all over
the internet and social media called Magic Mind, I think,
and it's a shot. It seems to have gotten some

(01:03:47):
some favorable reviews from some influencers, which not always trustworthy,
but it's also gotten some favorable reviews from from which
seems to be legitimate people. And so, you know, my
thought is, you know, is there anything out there that actually,

(01:04:08):
you know, from a neural science perspective, is there something
that you would eliminate from a diet. You know a
lot of people say alcohol is horrible, eliminate that caffeine,
and I was there was somebody talking the other day
and they were saying that nicotine in small doses is good.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Yeah. Well, so there's a lot to talk about here,
I mean, and a lot of it depends on what
your goals are, et cetera. So, yeah, nicotine in the
right delivery form like a patch, is going to be
better than a cigarette for example. You know, it's it's
psychoactive because it you know, it hits receptors that are

(01:04:50):
for nicotine that our brain uses, and so yeah, it
sharpens focus, it improves memory, but you have to be careful.
It's you know, it is it is addictive. So so
again it's all. I was listening to Andrew Huberman yesterday
and he he had a chemical you know, biologist death,

(01:05:14):
no chemical biologist on was talking about a lot of
these things, and so yeah, I use caffeine. Caffeine is amazing.
It's one of the most affective performance enhancing substances for athletes.
For athletes, you know, reduces perceived pain, it increases you know,
cardiovascular tone. It's fantastic. You brought up alcohol. Yeah, the

(01:05:38):
data now shows pretty clearly that you know, even one
drink a day, you know, over a lifetime, you okay,
your brain's a little smaller by the time you die.
Then you have to ask yourself the question is like
my goal had the biggest brain when I die, or
is it something else? Because the thing about alcohol is
like it actually is really useful for lubric hating social interactions,

(01:06:01):
and when you look at the archaeological record, there is
a very close linkage between people settling down and living
in one place and fermenting alcohol. Right, So either it
was like necessary once you start living in high densities
with other people, or once you discover alcohol. You just

(01:06:23):
want to sit down and have a beer with your friends.
So I just want to point that out. It's it.
You know, it can reduce stress and you know all
it's all about the dose.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Right, right, And like you said earlier too, it's about
the goal, right because you know, if you're upset, maybe
your goal is to get plastered so you can not
worry about it or not think about it anymore. Right
As opposed to you mentioned lubricating a social interaction, you
can you know, sip on a beer or have a

(01:06:55):
drink that you kind of nurture all night long, just
you know whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Yeah, yeah, it seems like you're asking me for more subtle.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Well again, since you don't feel comfortable endorsing it. Is
there a food?

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
I mean, I like, I you know, I'm drinking kratom
right now, which is from Southeast Asia. I mean, I
use it in it's very pure leaf form the way
it would be has been used for centuries, com or Kraton.
It's it's now everywhere you see it, but most of

(01:07:31):
where you see, you know, most of the formulations seem
to be highly derived, very high dose, not the way
people people basically chew the leaves laborers to give them
energy and focus to kind of get through the day.
For me, it has an added benefit because it's antiitussive,

(01:07:54):
meaning it it helps with like bronchitis and asthma. So
I've had that my whole life. I have very bad
exercise induced asthma. The only thing that's ever worked for
it is this, So you know, asthma and Hailer is none.
None of the drugs have ever worked for me. So
so you know it has that benefit. You know, there's

(01:08:16):
there's just I think there's a lot out there to explore.
My own perspective would be the closer you can get
to nature and probably the better, right. You know, various
societies have discovered a whole variety of different compounds over
the last you know, many thousands of years that have

(01:08:41):
utility in certain applications, you know, and we're kind of
rediscovering them, like silas ibin for example. I mean, you know,
magic mushrooms, which from the archaeological record, maybe people have
been playing around with hallucinogens since for tens of thousands
of years.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
It's quite possible, right, I think our Native Americans, right,
they supposedly they have a history of peyote and some
other substantances that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
They So now these are you know, who'sin agens are
the darling of you know, a treatment for depression, and
you know, we don't understand everything about it, but seem
to induce. You know, it's like flipping a switch in
the brain that has incredibly long lasting effectiveness, like a

(01:09:35):
single dose lasting weeks or six months or sometimes even longer.
That seems far better than you know, taking a drug
for life that has a lot of side effects. So
the point is is, I think there's like a lot
to explore. People have always explored psychoactive compounds and it's all,

(01:09:59):
you know, it really is about kind of the dose
and the context. You know, don't get in the car
after doing any of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Absolutely, Oh oh my gosh. It reminds me. And so
when I was a much younger person, you know, my
my friends and I, especially if we did really good
with a final exam or whatever, we would indulge in

(01:10:30):
a little LSD and we we had a designated driver
and he would drive us around. This is in Houston, Texas.
So there was the main drag back then was West
Timer and West Timer had all the restaurants, all the clubs,
and it also would have police and so one of
our you know, so you know, if we saw a

(01:10:55):
police with their lights on, we gravitated towards that because
it was wonderful. It was brilliant, it was it was
great show. And then we also liked going to clubs
with it and for the same thing, all these bright
lights and stuff like that. But it wasn't something that
we would do on a regular basis. It was it
was it had some issues with it and stuff like that.

(01:11:17):
But he's kind of reminded me of that story. All right,
let me ask you this. We've had kind of an
epidemic of things like dementia, and there are some indications
that part of the reason that we had the slut
of dementia was we eliminated fats from our diet. You know,

(01:11:42):
there was that whole non fat everything. And so, what's
your take on dementia and you know, feeding the brain
with obviously you mentioned protein, what about fats? What's your
take on all that?

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Wow, it's very complicated. Let's say that first and foremast
nutrition overall is a funny thing, right, because what seems
to be healthy one decade is now the least healthy thing,
you know, in another decade. And yeah, there was a
whole movement in the seventies and eighties to eliminate bats.

(01:12:20):
And you know, like if you look at that old
food pyramid with so you know, you think the thinking
changes all the time. I don't know what's responsible for
the major increase in dementias. I mean, one is just
the aging of society, right, so we have more old
people than kind of ever before, and people are living long.

(01:12:44):
In general, there seems to be contributions of environmental insults,
although that's again it's debatable. And yeah, I mean I
think what we eat, socializing, so we know that, you know,

(01:13:06):
people who are lonely, people who are disconnected are greater risk.
Social stimulation is an important way to head off decline.
It's really really important. Physical activity, so we know people
are you know, in general, are not very physically active

(01:13:27):
physical you know, being inactive, being overweight, being obese, uh,
you know, having cardiovascular issues. Those are all risk factors
for dementia. So if you know, if people are eating
poorer diets, they're not exercising, they're overweight, they are maybe

(01:13:52):
not socializing as much. Those are all you know, I
think that's a perfect storm for creating conditions of cognitive
decline and dementia and all of those all of those
things also contribute to inflammation, so they unleash inflammatory processes,

(01:14:14):
and inflammation is really the killer here. So accelerated brain
aging looks and body aging looks like turning up the
clock really fast. So you can see that in our monkey.
The monkey population we've been studying on an island off
the coast of Puerto Rico, had been studying them for

(01:14:35):
eighteen years free ranging, and you know, they just like humans.
You know, they have social networks and social capitals, social status,
and they have environmental insults. And when you know, when
their world gets turned upside down by like a hurricane,
for example, has happened in twenty seventeen, then what we

(01:14:56):
see is accelerated aging in the body and the brain.
And with a genetic profile, gene expression, you know that
looks like the nerdy generate diseases like you know, Alzheimer's,
like multiple sclerosis, like Parkinson's disease, et cetera. So you know,

(01:15:19):
I think that those those aren't necessarily you know, like
the it's not a in many cases it is the
result of just you know, you got bad genes, but
more often than not, it's you know, these are lifestyle
impacts sort of compounded over you know, over your entire

(01:15:43):
life course. And yeah, I mean eating poorly, not being active,
not socializing, being stressed out in general just puts you
at a higher risk over.

Speaker 1 (01:15:56):
All. Right, final question, Uh, there are games out there
that are marketed as a way of keeping your brain sharp.
What's your take on these things? Does it really help
our brain to, I don't know, play these games or

(01:16:17):
is it just marketing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
There's been a lot of controversy over this as well,
so famously around the company and game platform Luminosity, right,
which was pretty high profile for a while. But that
was also because of the claims. The claims where you
play Luminosity games, you will get smarter and you'll make
better decisions, you know, throughout everything else that you do.

(01:16:42):
And my colleague Joe Cable here at pen ran an
actual randomized controlled trial of Lumosity and what he found is, like,
what happens is you get better at Lumosity games, but
it doesn't necessarily translate.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
It doesn't translate out of the game.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
So you know, I think that in terms of like
is it going to make you smarter? Not necessarily, but
doing anything you can to keep cognitively fit. That could
be doing the crosser puzzle, you know, for example, or
playing chess with somebody, right, those are always to keep
your mind active and so at least it won't atrophy

(01:17:21):
if you will. The other thing is is that there
I think there's a merging data that indicates that you know,
playing video game. You know, like these these massive online
games where you play with a lot of other people, uh,
are are kind of good for you, right, so they
actually improve mental health, reduce anxiety, speed up reaction times,

(01:17:47):
things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
It's got increase it's got to increase your reaction time.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
So but the you know, the issue there again it's
like it's what we talked about with drugs. It's dose, right,
So it's like if it takes over your life, and
the games are built to be addictive, right, that that's
how they If you are a game maker, you want
people playing the game as much as possible, buying it
stuff inside the game as possible. That's where it gets

(01:18:16):
problematic if it crowds out the other stuff in your life, right,
especially the things that are harder to do. Then that's
that's definitely not good.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
Absolutely, listen, I want to thank you so much for
stopping by. It's gonna blast, and uh, you know again,
I want to shout out the book for those individuals
that are interested. It's called The Leader's Brain and what
what makes Us follow? Right, and and uh, you can
find it on Amazon or wherever your favorite wherever you

(01:18:48):
buy your favorite books. And uh, doctor Michael Platt, thank
you so much for stopping by.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
Thank you, it's been great.