Lessons - The Neuroscience Breakthrough That Could Stop Brain Disease | David Eagleman - Stanford Neuroscientist

In this lessons episode, explore how novelty and mental challenge protect the brain from cognitive decline. Learn how trying new activities builds neural pathways that delay dementia, learn why staying socially and mentally active is more powerful than relying on diet or supplements, and learn how Ulysses contracts help us beat temptation and make better decisions for our future selves. One more one more thought and question on memory and sort of brain health and brain optimization. I've I've spoken to Steven Kotler who does a lot of work on flow state and he's written several books of Dhammaha many and he was speaking about activities that ward off all timers and dementia and I don't know about the science behind it he has a lot of conviction that certain kinds of activities can ward off Alzheimer's dementia. Is there anything that is studied or proven to ward off Alzheimer's dementia if that's something that's in your family? He was mentioning if I remember correctly he mentioned that penis was one of the most beneficial activities because it's cognitive and physical at the same time which apparently is something that is not prevalent in many other sports. I don't know where I think he's on research on this but regardless in your studies have you found anything like that to be the case where any sort of activity prevents cognitive decline maybe any foods anything at all really. The whole thing comes down to challenging your brain with with novelty. So the key is and you can fit anything you want in here including penis but the key is if you are an expert tennis player then playing tennis in your sixties or something is not going to benefit you. The thing that will benefit you is to not play tennis but to start something else that you've never done before that you're terrible at that you need to learn how to do that's the thing and this is true across whatever it is whether it's I don't know people always ask me about Sudoku or you know was sailing or whatever the thing is it's got to be something that's challenging what you always want to do but especially if your brain is getting closer to cognitive impairment is put yourself between the levels of frustrating but achievable so you're taking on a new task let's say you've never done Sudoku before then that's cool you start Sudoku you don't know what you're doing you're putting a lot of effort into it the point is what that's doing in the brain is building new roadways you're you're making new things happening with your synapses that you haven't done before as soon as you get good at Sudoku then you have to drop that and pick up something else like tennis like whatever the new thing is that you haven't done but the key is the challenge and that's where you always want to be and weirdly that's actually our best thing that we know about for you know for dementia is challenging the brain obviously there's lots of pharmaceutical work going on and other things like that as far as foods go I don't think there's anything that's particularly convincing about that if one already has a balanced diet I don't think there's some magical new food that one can do there but the key is to constantly build new roadways and bridges in the brain there was a study that's been going on for I think like 30 years now called the religious order study and this is on nuns who live in convents in the Chicago area who all agreed that they would donate their brains upon their death and so over the years different nuns have passed away and donated their brains and the brains have been autopsy and the stunning result from the study is that a number of these nuns actually had Alzheimer's disease their brains were ravaged you know molecularly you can see this in the tissue the tissue is degraded their brain tissue but even though they had Alzheimer's disease they didn't show the cognitive deficits that one would expect and this came as a giant surprise but the reason is because these women live in these convents until the day they die and in these convents they have chores and responsibilities they have this very active social life and you know when you have an active social life you're you're arguing people fighting with people and you know getting along with people and whatever it's we sometimes say in the field that there's nothing is hard for the brain as other people and so it's constant challenge or constantly keeping their brains active and as a result even though their brains are degenerating they are they're building these new roadways compare this to people who retire and don't have that kind of challenge and sit at home alone and watch television on the couch that's a very different thing that's happening as their brain tissue degenerates there's no new roadways being built and that's why you can see the cognitive correlates of the degeneration that's fascinating so retiring very retiring with no activity no no learning new skills no socializing very bad for your brain I would even it's interesting but I guess by virtue of what you just said flow state is great for productivity and for work but it's actually useless for preventing cognitive decline which is ironic because everybody keeps trying to how do I get the flow state how do I you know how do I optimize my four hours in the morning where nothing distracts me and I'm completely in the zone that that's exactly right you got it that what's funny is brains are always in this middle state where they're trying to balance novelty and familiarity so if you're doing too much novelty it's tough and the brain really wants to just be I for example I just returned from an eight day hike in Spain a pilgrimage along commuter de Santiago and you know each night you're sleeping in a different little inn and then you walk 15 miles to the next place and so on and and when I came home just a couple days ago I really just wanted to be in my bed because I thought oh it's familiar and I want to be in this bed for several nights instead of a different one each night so it's it's tough when you've got too much novelty but the key thing that you just want to make sure you're always avoiding is too much familiarity and you're exactly right in the flow state you're saying okay this is something I've trained my brain on it knows exactly what to do and I don't have to challenge it and think about something new here so you don't want too much of that what would you say that are some some common habits that are really damaging to either our brains health or just brains potential yeah I mean so many things that that we all do obviously you know diet is one unless people think about it what's cool what what I think is neat is that just over the course of my lifetime so far I feel like I've seen a real change in the way that society thinks about diet now but maybe I'm wrong maybe people just talking about this on social media about eating clean and then they don't actually do it who knows but I think some people try but maybe probably that's true too to be you know what I find interesting I see these these weightlifting videos on on YouTube and I watch these things and I try to implement some new techniques and whatever these things all have you know millions or tens of millions of views and I think that's awesome that's so many people are watching this thing about like you know the five best you know back exercises or five best bicep exercise I think hey that's so great that so many people are watching this but what I don't know is how that translates in other words do people are there many people watching it than not doing it I'm not I'm not certain anyway um as far as things uh that we do obviously it or it feels to me anyway that there's been a lot more emphasis about sleep and this is massively important one thing that I feel like I've seen a change on as well is alcohol consumption which is related to the sleep issue um it's become more socially cool to not drink alcohol which is a great idea right because alcohol among other things disrupts your sleep um and so at least in the circles that we spin in uh a lot of people are not drinking in a way that let's say our parents generation everybody drank so I think that's a that's a really cool hack that's been happening socially um you know and obviously one generation ago everyone would smoke cigarettes and there were the ads you know nine out of ten physicians recommend camel brand of cigarettes or something uh it's crazy to look back at those sorts of ads but anyway so they're all sorts of bad habits that people are are working on to my mind one of the main interesting challenges in life is that we all have temptations that we in our long-term thinking self would rather not give into whether that's drugs or alcohol or some people have gambling or some people have sex addictions or whatever the issue is that people have when they're when they're really in a moment of sober thinking about who do I want to be in the world they're hungover on a hike and I think okay I don't want to do that anymore the question is how do you get yourself to actually not do it because we are very different people at different times and when you're faced with the temptation you're probably going to do it and so my uh one of my deep interests and this is actually my my next book um is on something called the Ulysses contract which is how we make deals with ourselves through time um the listeners may remember the story of Odysseus also known as Ulysses who is coming home from the Troge war and realized he was going to pass the island of the sirens and and he really wanted to hear their songs but of course he knew that like any mortal man their their song would seduce the the whole ship to to come crash into the rocks and everyone would drown so what he did is he filled his sailor his you know sailors ears with beeswax and he had them lash him to the mast so that he could hear the sirens song but he couldn't do anything about it because he instructed them I want you to go straight and just ignore me if I'm screaming and yelling the point is the Ulysses of sound mind who is you know tens of miles from the island knew that the future Ulysses who who would be right next to the island would behave badly what he was doing is making sure that when faced with temptation the future Ulysses wouldn't uh wouldn't behave badly so um what I find very interesting is how we can make Ulysses contracts in our own lives to make sure that you know for example we show up at the gym one way to do that is to tell your friend you'll you'll meet him there at you know nine a.m and if you tell your friend you'll meet him there then you wake up you maybe feel a little lazy you feel like skipping anything but I can't because he's going to be there so then you show up so that's a very simple way of making Ulysses contract for people who are trying to you know battle drug or alcohol addictions there are all these things you can do like make sure you never carry more than twenty dollars in your pocket because if somebody offers you drugs on the street you'll say oh shoot I don't have the money or for an alcoholic the important thing is to clear all the alcohol out of the house because even if you think okay look I've I know what to do I'm not going to drink this thing if it's there you'll drink it at some point so um there are all kinds of things if we think about ourselves as creatures through time who are not the same person in all moments I think this is a very powerful hack to to help our future behavior thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one