Exercise Neuroscientist: AI is Killing Our Critical Thinking

The human brain is the most complex structure known to human kind. How much has the brain actually changed? The prefrontal cortex. It is the CEO of your brain. Our attention span and the attention span of young people have really shrunk down because of social media, because of TikTok. Brain plasticity is the thing that brought me into neuroscience. Everything that you do from the sports that you play to the stress levels that you have is affecting your brain. Too much stress is a brain cell killer. Lots of exercise is a brain grower. There are many, many activities where longer attention spans and deeper attention spans are preferable. That is a battle royale going on in our society today. You need to be able to focus your attention to right, to read, to integrate. We decrease struggle too much. That struggle is good. That metabolism of new brain cell synapse formation, that means you're doing it the right way. What are daily habits we should be considering to maintain our longevity over the brain or potentially been reverse aging? Physical activity. New brain cells have been shown in people in their 90s. Wow. And then now I see this evolution of AI. This is the debate going on all of the country in the educational system. It is going to have a long term effect. But the good news is. Dr. Winis-Zizuki, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me, Sean. So the brain remains the least understood organ from what I understand of all the organs that we have in this human body. Yes. Why is that the case? Why is the brain after decades of neuroscience, improvements and progress that we still don't really understand the brain fully? Yeah. The answer to that is very clear. It's because the human brain is the most complex structure known to humankind. There's nothing more complex. What can allow us to see, feel, think about, laugh about the world to create everything around us, to create the concept of a podcast. For example, that is what the human brain is capable of. And we made good progress about the basic senses, about the basic motor movements. We know the part of the brain that controls our movements. But it's so much more complicated than that, to add in what humans were evolved to do, which is socially interact. And then you get a whole new level of complexity, which is the thing that has fascinated neuroscientists since we started studying the brain. When you look at, I'm fascinated with just evolutionary biology psychology, I'm curious to know the development of the human brain from 10,000 years ago to even 100,000 years ago, how much has the brain actually changed over all of these evolutions? Yeah. So I mean, from early humans, there's been enormous change in the brain. And we know I'm just going to focus on one key area of the brain that is the most developed in humans compared to all other species. And that is the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain right behind your forehead. That is, it's called the center of executive function. It orders your day. It is allowing you to order the questions that you're about to ask me. It allows me to order how I roll out the answers. That I'm going to give to your questions. Planning, creativity, personality is all housed in the prefrontal cortex. And if you look at the brain of a rat and the brain of a human, that is one of the biggest relative differential. We have an enormous prefrontal cortex compared to nothing against rats. They, you know, they've served our experimental purposes beautifully well. But they have a teeny tiny prefrontal cortex. So it's really the prefrontal cortex that makes humans humans. It's one of the main differential factors. It's more complicated than that. Of course. But if you want to talk about one key area that is the most developed in the humans compared to other animals, you must focus on the prefrontal cortex. And has this changed over time through us being hunters and gatherers and inventing tools, great fire so we can cook meat? Like, has this development been changing the way our brain has been shaped and has, especially the prefrontal cortex is a grown over time? Or has it maintained the same? It's, this is a great question because many of my colleagues would argue that more recently when our attention spends, so prefrontal cortex is also critical for ability to shift and focus attention. And since 2010, 2014 or so, our attention span and the attention span of young people have really shrunk down because of social media, because of TikTok, because of that instant gratification of, here's one cool thing for five seconds. Oh, I'm going to, then I'm going to push it on to another thing for five seconds. And we see that in the classroom, high schools, colleges, universities with the lessen annability of students to really sit down and focus and read those long format assignments that we love to give at universities. That is a shift. It's a very recent shift. It is, it can be seen in, in test scores and in, in, in the ways that colleges, universities, high schools are approaching education. Wow, because that was my, my question is, with digital distraction, social media, yeah, TikTok, how is the brain shape actually changing through these modern inventions that didn't exist for hundreds and thousands of years? Yeah, so in fact, that general concept that you just named is the thing that brought me into neuroscience. That's called brain plasticity, the ability of the human brain to change and grow or shrink based on the environment that you give yourself that you live in. And so everything that you do from the sports that you play to the people you interact with, to the stress levels that you have is affecting your brain. Lots of social interaction, lots of great sleep, lots of exercise is a brain grower. And so yes, if you spend, so somebody just quoted at NYU that five hours a day, the average college student spends five hours a day on social media every single day. In just five years that, that adds up to, not just five years, but that can add up to 25 years of your life if you continue to do that. It is astounding. And then you ask yourself, is that affecting how my brain works and how my brain is being shaped? Absolutely. It does. So everything that you do is shaping your brain. So the social media or the social connection that you give your brain is equally powerful. And it's our choice to decide what we give our brains. Do you think these modern inventions that I guess our brains have haven't really changed in terms of what it can adapt to? So do you think that creates a structural change in the way our brains are shaped? Like does it potentially make our pre-pronged to cortex even smaller over time or other parts? This hasn't, I mean, I pointed out something that changed in the culture around 2010, 2014. So that is not long enough to actually change the long-term shape and size. But did it change individual brains and focus on certain attributes versus others absolutely in individuals? You can see that. I mean, the earliest days were done. Let's do a positive example. In musicians, you play musical instrument all growing up. You have a larger part of your motor cortex that represents if you're violinist, your left fingers. And your motor, so that's sensory representation of the left hand is bigger and motor representation is bigger. That's great. And that is underlying the skill that you've built up. We're talking about activities that are decreasing our attention span. That doesn't necessarily shrink it, but it does change it. And there are many, many activities in everybody's life. I don't care how old you are. Where longer attention spans and deeper attention spans are preferable. Let's just talk about school at university. So that is a battle royale going on in our society today. It's almost like focus and attention is becoming one of the most rarest commodities, potentially an advantage that you can develop over students, over entrepreneurs. Yes. Because it's just so rare these days. Yes. Yes. Even conversations like this are on a date, even. Yes. People just saw on their phones. I know. Yeah. It is crazy. And I I wonder, I'm going a little bit more left field here, but I think about back in the days when we didn't have Google Maps, when we didn't have Waze, and we had to use our own either maps or understanding of locations to kind of memorize where we were, even phone numbers, right? I remember I was so really good at memorizing phone numbers. I had to. And then nowadays you just call someone, what's that? Or wherever it might be. And then now I see this evolution of AI, where I think something like 40% of Gen Z are now depending on using some of these LLL models before they make a decision. It's like such a critical part. And I can say for myself as well, whether it comes to health or business, where does that go when we continue to use struck like critical thinking and outsource that to AI models? What happens to our brain five years from now, 10 years from now, and even our kids when they're using these models? Absolutely. This is the debate going on all over the country in the educational system. But the good news is that there are ways to counter that, to take cell phones away from younger kids and put an age limit. You only get a smartphone at a certain age that eliminates the social pressure of social media, that is devastating for teenagers. But for learners in high school and college, there are phone free classrooms, there are screen free classrooms. So, oh my gosh, my brain now has to interact with your brain with no screens in the middle. Imagine that. Imagine that. And that is a lot of what we're going through and being adaptive too, because sometimes we want to take advantage of the beautiful my own field neuroscience. There are so many wonderful illustrations that will, you know, it's a picture is worth a thousand words. I could draw it horribly on the whiteboard or I can show you one illustration. And then, but we talk about it. And we don't just, you know, rely on those PowerPoint presentations to gloss over too many details. We dive into them and spend time on them. Yeah, I guess it's even more important for younger kids because their brain plasticity at that point is so fluid and so moldable. Mm-hmm. That I don't know, I guess I'm curious to know if, you know, for me at 33, how much does my brain start to change if let's say I start to outsource my critical thinking with AI or get distracted over social media, is there a sort of age point where there's just a diminishing not return, but change in my brain? And is it less likely to affect my brain as I get older from potentialism of these negative habits? Um, so yes, first there is an enormous amount of growth and brain plasticity in younger teenagers. Adolescence, that, you know, we've all gone through that and there's an enormous amount of change. So things that happen during that time period can be have long-term effects. We still have great brain plasticity we're all capable as adults into older age of learning new things. And so brain plasticity is still there. Does that mean that if you spend five hours a day on TikTok that that's not gonna affect you as much? No, I think it has a potential to continue to affect you. And it's, I think the question is, what is the healthy balance? I would never say don't use any of these large language learning models. It can be so helpful in certain situations. And we, I was thinking about what is my moonshot? I don't care whether it's reasonable or not in the classroom. I want complete control over when students have access and don't have access to their screens in large language models. So in certain situations, I can be absolutely sure that they are using their own brain power. And in this situation, yes, you can do it. You can, you can use large language models for that to train them on that creativity, to strain them on that struggle. We, we decrease struggle too much in our thinking life. And so part of our job as educators is to teach people that struggle is good. That means you're learning. That means your neurons are growing. Talk to me about that because obviously people understand they go to the gym, they strain their muscles. It's what allows it to grow, stay healthy in the blood flowing. Right. Is the same analogy there with when it comes to learning something new or just challenging our brains that that Hormesis factor of stressing the brain a little bit is a good thing. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. I always go back to my undergraduate mentor, Mary and Diamond at UC Berkeley, who happened to have discovered one of the first neuroscientists ever to discover adult brain plasticity. Her classic experiments were done in the 1960s. I was a student of hers at UC Berkeley in the 1980s. But that description that she gave me the very first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley, taking a first-year seminar class called the Brain in its Potential made me want to become a neuroscientist. And she was so cool, I literally wanted to be her. I describe her as the Beyonce of neuroscientist. It's like, okay, I want to be the Beyonce of neuroscientist. And she looks up to you now. (laughing) So, well, I still look up to her. And I remember so vividly what she talked about in learning that is she asked us to think about how, it's almost your head hurts when you're trying to struggle with a big concept. And I think everybody can understand that. And she said, that is what you're supposed to feel because what's happening there is, so little neuroanatomy lesson, brain cells have input structures called dendrites. That's where they take in all of the information to try and process it in that individual brain cell and then send it out through a brain structure called the axon. And so, and it kind of looks like a hand. So, if my palm is the cell body and my fingers are the dendrites, the input structures and my wrist and my forearm is the axon. And she, she had these really large, beautiful hands. And she would say, every time you're learning something you're struggling, you are growing those dendrites, they're growing, they're trying to reach out and connect with somebody else. And that growth, that metabolism of new brain cell synapse formation is part of what's giving you that brain struggle. And she said, that's good. That's what you should be doing in all of your classes, struggling, understanding deeply. That is good. That means you're doing it the right way. And that was my model since day one. And with all the tools we now have to make certain things easier, faster, or to do the thing for us, not a big fan of that, we lose that struggle. And it feels more and more foreign. Well, we're here, me as a professor, here to remind people that is the journey. That is, that means you're doing it right. Yeah, and there's a particular part of the brain, which I totally forgot the name of. But I recently started going back and doing cold plunges. They're the worst. Oh, I love cold plunging. You love it? I do. It's still hard. It never gets easier. And one of the things that I heard from a podcast is that when there are things that you just struggle doing, it activates a certain part of that brain. And when you-- but it's all about how you perceive that struggle. So for some people, cold plunges is easy. So it's not going to activate it as much. Some people might be lifting weights or running. Yes. But for me, in particular, in case it's cold plunging. Yeah. And I just found it to be such a positive take of having a relationship with challenges in your life. Yes. Yes. In fact, it's a good thing that you're struggling. Yes. Yeah. Do you remember what that part of the-- it's called like ACE, Antirrier-- Synculate cortex, ACC. Yes. Yes. That's what it was. Yeah. Conflict monitoring. Yes. It's very involved in conflict monitoring. And you are struggling with this conflict. Do I punch or do I not punch? And what does that do for us, ultimately, as that part of the brain gets more developed? Is that a higher resilience factor that we develop when that brain is more activated than other people? What's kind of the benefit of it to help people do more cold plunges and to struggle a little bit more? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I-- you're talking about a mindset shift from struggle, my struggle with cold plunges. Oh, it's so hard to-- this is my challenge of the day. It makes it more active. It makes it something that you're going to engage in and try. You might fail, but it's a challenge. So challenges shouldn't be absolutely easy. I can do it every time. Challenges are something that I work at. I get better at. And if you could turn all of your life goals into smaller challenges instead of, ah, I'm never gonna get into medical school. I'm never gonna get my own podcast. That is such a powerful mindset shift and it addresses something else that I've written a lot about, which is the anxiety that comes with, ah, fear of the unknown, which is the kind of definition of anxiety. I don't know what's gonna happen. It's, you know, should I shy away from that? Let me just go to my safety spot. But no, if you can develop a relationship with this idea of challenging yourself because challenge leads to growth, mindset growth, world experience growth, and that's something that is really healthy for all brains. - Yeah, and even this is proven within learning, I believe as well, that if you do something or try to learn something and it's too easy, you're not gonna get the benefits of retention. If it's too hard, it's also not gonna be good 'cause you just lose motivation. So it's finding that perfect medium balance where it's just challenging enough, but you can kind of pursue through it. - Yes. - So that challenge is so important even when it comes to retention of memories and information in our brains. - Yeah, yeah. There's so much valuable information about how retention can be improved just by spacing and learning. And it's not all about just reading your notes, reading your notes over and over and over again. It's about engaging with that material by, I'm not gonna read my notes, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna try and recall everything I can from yesterday's lecture and not rely on those scribbled notes. And that act of going back to trying engage with, to reproduce, I can remember part of it and the other can I figure it out, not just biologic, but by kind of reliving that experience. That has been shown to be so much more effective and long-term retention than simply going over your notes. It couldn't hurt and repetition is beneficial to memory. But especially for more complicated topics that free recall and it's almost as if you're trying to re-teach yourself the knowledge again. And so if you don't get everything absolutely go back and remind yourself, okay, I got two thirds of it. Here's the last third, okay, next time I'm gonna try and teach myself the whole thing again. That has been shown to be so powerful and effective. And that is not so much what we're teaching in high schools and some foreign universities have the opposite. It's just a repetition model. Sure. Which can work but again not as effective. And so at the College of Arts and Science, we are really focused on this retrieval, deep retrieval model to engage and to really kind of reinvigorate all these memories as you're studying. Yeah, I guess this goes back to just the struggle, right? If you're just sitting there and instead of relying on your notes, you are forcing your brain to try to recall things. Yes. Not easy all the time. You're like, right, you might be the tip of your tongue. You really have to work at getting it. Yeah. 'Cause I think about, I have so many conversations with people that are quite young that have such a difficult time with short-term memory. And I don't know if it's literally like the structural change of her brains through modern technology or if it's just the lack of attention they have throughout the whole day when they're in a conversation. They're just thinking about something else or they're on their phones. Right. What are some tips in general for people to have better memory, especially short-term? Okay. So that's such a great question. There's so many things that one can do to start to focus on that. Number one, since we're all on our phones and we all get those notifications and say, what's going on? That shift of attention to what we are talking about right now to, let me just double check with my phone, is that is taking away the strength of the memory that we're forming right now of our conversation. So you wanna be more engaged? Put the phone away. Put your full focus for as long as you can on whatever it is you want to remember. So that's one thing. Second thing is there's one transformative thing that I've written a lot about that is an immediate benefit for your focus attention. And that is moving your body. Exercise, moving your body and getting your heart rate up in particular is has been shown to be one of the most effective, immediate things that you can do to increase your focused attention. And the other thing you get as an added benefit is mood boost. So I tell all of my students, you have a difficult lecture coming up or you're a review for a test that you really wanna be there for. Go walk around Washington Square Park three times and then come to lecture because that's going to improve your focus attention. That's gonna improve your mood and you're gonna be ready to learn and pull everything in and by the way, put your phone down. Don't look at notifications. Don't check your email during the lecture. Be there in lecture. That is so powerful. The other thing that I'll add, which is one of my go-to's to work on my own focus is of course mindfulness meditation. If you can start a practice, it's easier to go on a walk on a power walk 'cause I'll get you an immediate. - It's right away. - Everybody can do that. It is more challenging to start a regular meditation practice but the key is always start with short meditations. Everybody's like, okay, I'm gonna go to an hour meditation class and you obviously fail. Start with 30 seconds. Start with a minute each. Do a guided meditation. There are free ones on YouTube, you know, thousands of them. Use that tool. Ask your friends, what do they use? What do they love? I was just talking to students last night and I had challenged them to do a personal experiment on improving sleep. And so this one student decided to do three things to improve their sleep preparation for sleep. So take a warm shower, stop watching their screen and do a mindfulness meditation right before they go to bed. He said, I usually pray before I go to bed. So I added all three things together and I said, did you see a difference? And he said, yes, I felt, I felt much more relaxed. I was ready to sleep at that moment. So there might be moments where you can add it in more easily than saying, okay, I'm gonna sit cross-legged. I'm gonna say, ohm and try and do what everybody says you're supposed to do when you meditate. So many different ways to do it. - Yeah, yeah. I always like this analogy. We talked about straining the brain similar to the muscle growth. And I think about how fasting is becoming a big thing now because we're just, there's so much food that this is just not the way our ancestors were eating. - Yes, yes. - And I wonder if it's the same with the brain where our brain is just not used to all of the stimuli that we're exposed to on a daily basis. And I don't know what effect that has in the brain, but what is, I'm curious to know your thoughts on this idea of dopamine fasting. It's becoming like a trend now where the idea is just to remove all sorts of dopamine that you can for a day, could be for a week. I did a three day dark retreat a couple months ago in Mexico. And I just stayed in a room. I fasted it for three days and it was completely dark. Electronic, so obviously. And I just felt like my brain was able to breathe and rest. And I was just capable of having so much more willpower and thus retaining things faster. It was quite remarkable. And I just use that analogy of fasting, like brain fasting almost. Talk to me a little bit about the newer signs of that. - Yeah, dopamine fasting is not my favorite term because what you did is get rid of the artificial boosts of dopamine that come from phone notifications, from seeing a text from your friend, all those things. Dopamine itself is not bad. And in fact, when you get rid of the artificial dopamine boost that come from social media and all the screens that we are around all the time, that's when you can start to appreciate more intrinsic dopamine. Moving your body, even meditation, getting into that flow state of meditation, that boost dopamine that you didn't fast from that. You're trying to be able to enjoy that more. Now, can that compete with, okay, I admit, I like little kitten videos. I love looking at little kittens and little puppies. And because it makes me smile every single time. And if I just spend my whole day looking at all those things and whatever Instagram says, knows that I like to look at, it doesn't allow me to benefit from other forms of dopamine release that I can enjoy. Like I do a morning tea meditation every morning. That is my form of meditation. I love brewing and drinking tea. I add a meditation onto it. And that is absolutely, I'm addicted to it. to it, it is really seen dopamine. I enjoy it more when right before that, I wasn't scrolling on my phone for the little kittens and puppies. So it lets you appreciate the more natural forms of enjoyment that we have in our life, including a great conversation with a friend. A shared meal, it can be a dopamine boost. It kind of recalibrates those boosts. I mean, you can go far away and say, okay, well, stop taking your cocaine, that will give you a boost of dopamine 'cause we're never gonna feel that in natural situations. Next step down from that is the boost that you get from social media. - Sure, sure. And the idea, from a scientific perspective, is the idea that the human brain has so much capacity to have dopamine levels and it's this hedonic adaptation where we need more and more dopamine to be able to get the same level of effect. - Yes. - And that continues the role of our time if we're stimulated. - It is and that is the diabolical nature of social media. And at one point, it's so great. You know everything that makes me smile that I wanna see on my feed. But if I get addicted and I spend five hours a day, like young people are doing today, that will hijack my dopamine system and will affect how I am able to enjoy other things in my life. I mean, that's exactly what happens. It is an addiction. They've found a new kind of addiction for us and doesn't have an effect. Absolutely it does. But the good news is that there is a resolution to that. You have to pledge to not look at your phone to really limit your phone. So instead of five hours, make it one hour a day. Make it a treat that you have. And not right before you go to sleep because it can stimulate you and you may not have good sleep. And in fact, not engaging in social media and phones is safer. A lot of negative thoughts come when you're doing this, especially young people are doing this at night. Make it the treat of your day. And that's how you could balance it. - Right. And I guess it goes back to the struggle part where you're associating some sort of dopamine reward with effort. - Yes. - Whereas these days, the amount of dopamine you can get is through a tap or through a button sharing a photo. Before it was like, you have tools, we have to hunt the animals. There was a lot more effort required to get the same level. - Well, I'm gonna say that some things are not effortful. My team meditation is not effortful. Although it took a while to get the flow going to build that habit up. A meal with a friend is not effortful. You make that time. But other dopamine boosts moving your body, physical activity gives you a great dopamine boost. Yeah, that's more effortful. So there's a wide range of things that dopamine uses in our normal everyday life that hasn't been hijacked by the phone. And that include really easy, wonderful things that everybody will enjoy or can enjoy, as well as more effortful things. - Yeah, it's funny because people think about being on their phones too much and them being distracted as the reason why there's such a loneliness epidemic amongst all ages. But you're saying from a neurological perspective, because there's so much dopamine that we're receiving in our brains, we don't feel the same reward of having a one-on-one conversation with someone that we used to. It's just so much easier just to get that level of dopamine on your phone. And it's always there. - It's always there. - Easy to access versus the effort of talking to someone. - Yes. - And that really makes sense now why people just don't want to associate as much with other people and connect. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, you lose the habit. You lose the skills of having those longer conversations that, and even communication in emojis, you're losing the language of, you know, it keeps us, it takes us farther and farther away from a normal human interaction. - Yeah, this makes me think about the relationship between the thoughts we have on our daily basis, the inner voice people say. And the structural changes that it can make in our brain. People usually focus on, of course, the negative side, the fact that if we are always negative, pessimistic, fearful that it could potentially have negative effects throughout the rest of our bodies as well. Has that been something that's been proven with clinical studies? - Oh, sure. - Yeah. - Sure. The kind of most extreme example is PTSD. So people that, soldiers that come back from war and have highly stressful, stressful situations, they've put themselves in these highly stressful situations. What does that do? It affects your body. There are digestive issues, ulcers. It has long-term effects on your reproductive system. And long-term PTSD has been shown to shrink the entire temporal lobe of the brain. One of the brain structures that is most sensitive to high levels of stress is one that I've studied for the last 30 years called the hippocampus, critical for long-term memory. That too much stress in the hippocampus, the hippocampus has receptors or kind of like doors for the stress hormone to walk through. And too much stress hormone goes into those brain cells in the hippocampus. The brain cells first start to shrink and then they die. And so people with PTSD have smaller hippocampi, hippocampus sits in the temporal lobe, your whole temporal lobe is also smaller in those situations. So yes, it has profound effects on both the body and the brain. Long-term stress. That's incredible, because people don't make that mind to body connection, right? People just think, oh, we have negative thoughts, but that's where it lives in the brain. And it's not really going to impact the rest of the body. Yes, it does. It's just that powerful, which means that if our negative thoughts making or making us sick, that shifting that to positive thoughts could actually heal us in some ways. Has that been proven the contrast? Yes, I practice a form of exercise called intensity that pairs physical movements from kickbox and dance and yoga with positive spoken affirmations. And so I looked in the literature, what is known about physical activity and positive affirmations? And we know about one or the other, but not about both. And for the positive spoken affirmations, there are studies that show if you have people say positive things to themselves out loud, they don't have to do it in conjunction with movement, but just say those things out loud, compared to seeing neutral things or seeing negative things. Mood is significantly improved in those people. It does affect what you think about, does affect your long-term outlook, which is why gratitude journaling is powerful. It is why who you surround yourself. If you surround yourself with a whole bunch of pessimists that are always telling you that the world is going to end and that you're not doing very well in the world anyway, it's not as helpful as surrounding yourself with optimism and joy and stronger connections, more positive connections, I should say. Yeah, one of the most helpful things, whenever I'm in fear or pessimistic mode, I think Tony Robbins said this, which is, it's impossible to feel grateful and fearful at the same time. Yes, yes. So whenever you feel fearful, think about the things that you're grateful for. Yes. It really resets that in a very powerful way. It does. It does. And to make that even more powerful, do that in community, find a community that can be your gratitude to support community needs. You get two things in one. You get that gratitude, but you also get that community connection. Evolutionarily, humans evolved as social species. There are parts of the brain that evolved only to be able so that I could look at your face and figure out, are you in a good mood? Are you in a bad mood? Did you like my last answer? Did you think it was stupid? All these things I'm trying to read. Like everybody is in your face. And there are parts of the brain that are only involved to read facial expression. Because it's so important, hunter-gatherers, they were living in groups. They depended on their connections and being able to work as a group. And that kind of social connection is critical for us. We're not doing that great these days in that modality. But those brain areas and those skills are there. They're there to practice for you to bring back into your life. Sure. And I guess in some ways it was a survival thing. Because you had to know whether this person was potentially going to betray you and kill your tribe or is going to be an ally. So it's like a survival instinct that we have embedded into us. Yes. We talked about this offer just before we started about the book that you're working on. to really. you know, this ties into this idea of having negative thoughts impacting our brain and the rest of our body. Loneliness is a real thing and it's only rising. I think Korea, which is where I'm from, has like the lowest birth rates right now in the world. And it is quite sad with what's happening. Part of it is this, what are those people that are feeling lonely, which I'm sure a lot of people are? Yeah. What are some ways they can reunite into communities to find their tribe? Some daily things and practical things that you would recommend from your group. So I recommend and what I try and do as dean of large college at New York University is give, produce those programs that will give the largest number of our students lots of choices to come into community. Cohort programs, mentorship programs, phone free spaces to come together and do different activities from game board night. We just had a great game, a very popular game board night. Oh, which game? Lots of different games. And so this was Richard Yee who was in the New York Times recently as he's 25 year old kid that loves to play games and had his first job in New York City. And he created this space where I think he had 2000 people come to play games board games together in, in Central Park. And so he is board game guy in New York City now. And I met him on a podcast interview and I invited him to come and bring board game night to New York University, the college of plastic science. And so he did it was great. It was great because the students that started out playing the games. You can tell they were all calling their friends. Or even though it was a phone free space, they did text their friends. And so the more friends came, more students came as the night went on because there was a buzz around how fun it was to play games. So something that people can unite on, whether it's sports, board games, something that is a similar objective. Community groups is great as a student body, both graduate and undergraduate, New York University students give a million hours a year in service, which I was like, that has to be wrong. Somebody reach out that number, but no, it was right. And so clearly our students love, love giving back. There's so many different opportunities to do that at NYU. But there's also, you know, clubs, we have 300 different clubs. You can join from cheese club to pre-med club, spiritual and religious service groups that are on the upswing, the just the joining of different church groups is on the upswing. And all of them are represented at ours and many other universities, wonderful way to promote community. I just think very hard myself and all the other leaders about what are all these schmorgasbord of options that we can give our students to make it easy for them to find their community. Because that's what they want. And we're just trying to make it really easy for them to do that. Yeah, yeah, it's so important. This kind of relates to health. I remember having this conversation with my family. A lot of my family is in Korea. And Korea is very advanced in terms of the annual checkups they provide for seniors. And they say that pretty much a lot of, if not most of cancers and all of these things that we could potentially die from are caught so early on in Korea. But the last frontier is still brain disease. And partly it's probably because of the fact that we don't fully understand it yet, but kind of walk us through if we want to live to 120, 150, yeah, and optimize our brain for longevity. Yeah. What are daily habits that we should be considering now? Yeah. Hopefully we're young enough to either maintain our longevity over the brain or potentially even reverse aging of it. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to start with the one that I've studied most deeply in my lab, which is physical activity, moving your body on a daily, on a regular basis. I'm not saying you have to become a marathon runner. Power walk every day. I live in New York City. There's lots of walking. Take advantage of every walk you don't live in New York City. Walk around Costco. That's huge. You know, just walk around the perimeter before you start and don't eat too many of those samples. Just take advantage of all the all the open spaces that you have. That is so important. Now that is not going to that's not going to cure dementia, the most Alzheimer's, which is the most common form of dementia. But what it's going to do is physical activity actually helps grow brand new brain cells in the hippocampus. And brand new synapses in the prefrontal cortex to brain areas that are the most susceptible to age-related cognitive decline. And as we get older, we're still up to grow these new brain cells. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's been shown. Wow. So we always retain that potential. And so physical activity is a pillar of long term brain health. And is there particular physical activity you recommend? Like is it resistance training or lifting heavy weights, long walks? What's a particular one that is ideal for brain health? We know that the best physical activity for the brain is any activity that increases your heart rate, which is great. That goes for power walking. That goes for a lot of, I mean, when I wait lift weights, my, I sweat, my heart rate goes up. I actually, my favorite workout is a cardio weights workout where I bring both things in because doctors recommend weight bearing exercises. And so I'm kind of doing both for my, for my body and my brain. But anything, anything that gets your heart rate up is good for your brain. So start with that. You know, there isn't one superstar activity. Although in my lab, when I choose a physical activity that I want to bring into my study, I often go to those that are guaranteed to increase your heart rate spin is a good one. You can't just get the heart rate going. Go to any spin class, especially in New York City. It is just a sweat fastest. You can't help but get your heart rate up, get a great sweat on. But there's so many others. So anything that's your heart rate is going up and it is good. So exercise is critical. Mindfulness that decreases your stress is another long term thing that you can do every single day. Does every one of us have some stress every day? Yes. Well, find a counter that you can do, including a walk can serve two as one because a walk will increase or decrease your anxiety and depression scores. Call me down, but it'll also, you know, it could improve your hippocampal cell growth at the same time. So you get two and one. That's another pillar. Third, social connection. So how much time are we spending each day face to face having connection or even a phone call? Do we even phone each other anymore? Talk to your mom. Talk to your cousin. Talk to your brother and your sister. Your best friend. Make that social time. Of course, face to face is great. We are social species and we are spending less and less time in face to face conversation with each other. That's number three. Number four is sleep. We have to do it every day. Can we optimize that? What is the optimum on average? It is eight hours. I'm sorry to say. No, six to eight. Like some people say eight. No, I'm saying eight. Eight is good. You get by and feel okay with six. Yes. What is the amount that is optimal for your brain health? That is eight. And let me give you a visualization for why you should shoot for eight. One of the key things that happens, many things happen, I mean, simplifying. One of the key things happens during sleep and during the sleep cycles that happen is that all the metabolites that you're all your billions of brain cells have put out the garbage of those brain cells are being cleaned up only during sleep. You don't do it during the day. You do it during sleep. So you say, you know, six hours is fine. You have two hours of garbage not collected in your brain. One night that's okay. But how many years have you been doing that? How much garbage is collecting in your brain? And then you wonder, why? Oh, God. I need a vacation. I, you know, so sleep is fundamental, so critical for brain health. And the last pillar where my five pillars of brain health is good nutrition. What is the best nutrition? What's good for your body is good for your brain. And the diet that has been studied the most for optimum brain health is the Mediterranean diet. There are variants for the mind, diet, the antidepressant, antidemensia diet. It's all based on healthy, low saturated fat. lots of fruits and vegetables balanced. That's good for your brain and for your body. Does this really come down to blood flow at the end of the day? All of these things that you mentioned, exercise, sleep, nutrition, and the heart getting that pumped up so that the blood flows to your brain? Is it really what it comes down to? Just increasing blood flow? That is important. That's an important factor. But what is happening when you are de-stressing when you're exercising? So let's start with exercise again. Every time you exercise, you're releasing a whole cavalcade, a whole cascade of neurochemicals in your brain. I like to call it a neurochemical bubble bath. I want everybody to be able to control their neurochemical bubble bath and their neurochemical environment. So exercise giving you a bubble bath, de-stressing, also giving you a bubble bath. It's actually taking out the stress hormone from your bubble bath, which is not good for your bubble bath. Good sleep is just cleaning up. I just I use that analogy of sleep shining up and making my brain squeaky clean. So when I wake up, I'm ready for the day. Nutrition is just good for overall metabolism, good health, and going back to the exercise. Yeah. Good blood flow, good circulation is absolutely critical for good brain health as well. Got it. Got it. I'm curious if there are early signs because one thing about the brain is we don't really see it visually in terms of the impacts that it has. If we have got problems, it shows up in the skin. Yeah. You know, if we have some harsh issues, we feel it right away. But the brain seems to be one of those things that you don't find out until quite later, which is the reason why people put it off. So lay it. It's not one thing that they think about. Yeah. What are some early signs that people should be paying attention to as morning signs to really start taking care of their brains? Yeah. I mean, I think that all of us, the good news is we've all gotten more sensitive to stress levels, anxiety levels. Those are too high. That is not good for your brain. So that means everybody everybody. Everybody is in the old world. Yeah. Start taking care of that. You know, everybody always pulls me aside. It's like, my memory is not good memory. Wendy, does that mean that I have Alzheimer's disease? And the answer is that as we age, we have more responsibilities. We have children, we have parents that we're taking care of. That takes away from our focus in addition to our phone and tasks and those things actually worsen our memory. If I could be a monk and sit in a cave and control everything that I want to learn in memory, my memory would be so much better. But we live in real life. So just because you feel like you can't remember things better, that might mean you're just an adult and you're dealing with lots of different things. And that is harder for your memory to to function in. That being said, early signs of dementia and Alzheimer's it affects the hippocampus first. Those plaques and tangles that damage the cells in the brain in Alzheimer's dementia attack the hippocampus first, which is why memory loss is one of the early signs. This is not like, you know, I used to be able to remember all my telephone numbers and now I can't, it is, I can't, I can't sit in a meeting anymore. I can't follow what's going on. Just attention span. Yes. Yeah, attention span, but that what I just said is a combination of your prefrontal cortex and your hippocampus, your long-term memory functions. But what I'm trying to get at is memory functions that are affecting your your work life, your home life, your missing critical things that you never did before, that I would say, go see a neurologist. That's when it's good to go see that professional. I know it's scary to be able to do that, but that will give you peace of mind. They will be able to give you tests to tell you whether you're in the normal range or they want to start monitoring you. Yeah. And is the only way for us to analyze our brain currently done through like an MRI or a spect, I forgot what the name of it was called. There's cat scans. Cats scans as well. I guess it's still a bit this barrier that still exists, whereas, you know, I have an oral right now and I can immediately measure my heart rate, my HRV on a daily basis. Yes. Where do you see, you know, technology going for us to ensure that brain disease isn't something that we have long-term. Does it need to be as common as going to like a physiotherapist? Is that something that you you can foresee us getting into? Yeah, that's a great question. So, yes, the oral rings are great. The outcome of your brain function is your memory, your focus, your attention. And there are clinics now, right now, testing you for hours and hours and hours on these basic functions. It's not that fun. It's quite, it's quite tedious. But yes, I see long-term that these can be done and normalized. So that we could say that's, you know, that's within normal range. You're, you're okay. I don't think everybody has to, has to take those. But I'm more a fan of what I like to call personal experiments. Okay. So, let's take those five pillars that I talked about. Exercise, de-stressing/meditation, social connection, sleep, and food. Can I, one by one, look at that and see how I could, I could optimize that in my life. So, do you think you're getting an optimal amount of cardio exercise in your life? Most of us would say, no, I need, I need more. You can't exercise three day, three hours a day. But what can you do? How can you bring that in? And what is it affecting you? Really look at your, your current state and then change it. And then see, is this helping my, my work day, is it helping my mood? Is it helping my attention? It's not as good as getting a, a signed report from a doctor. But it's, it's what you can do and it's scientifically proven. Is this going to hurt your brain? Absolutely not. It is on its way to build new, new hippocampal cells in your brain. What is that level where I feel like I could, I could feel that difference. Find that. Everybody has the power to do that. Yeah, and I guess that's great for someone that's fairly young, they don't need to go and see a neurologist at this age. But what is that age? I'm thinking about my mom specifically. If, you know, she's 63 right now, you know, she's getting older. What is that age where she should go see someone, even though there's no symptoms, but more of a preventative measure? Do you have any recommendations for people that are older? You know, there are a small number of clinics around the country that are, that do more preventative kinds of tests. I'm not sure if I would, okay, first I'm not a MD. This is my PhD in neuroscience. I'm not sure if I would recommend that for everybody to do. Where would I recommend if you have a family history? I mean, my father passed away with Alzheimer's dementia, so I certainly have that. If you start really noticing clear changes is good to start that process. It depends. I mean, I don't know the details and the ins and outs of all these clinics. They take a long time. I'm going to tell you the tests are tedious. It's not like, oh, fun. I could play computer games. No, they hours and hours of tedious testing. And I think it's quite expensive. So what I would recommend in the absence of clear memory problems, um, to work on these things that science have shown is really good for your brain and ask yourself, am I doing them to its utmost capacity in my life right now, whether you're working, whether you're retired or in between, um, how can I do that? And I guarantee you were going to find that thing one that you love to do. So you'll do that more because you love to do it. And two, you'll find that thing that thing or things that really work well for you. Maybe you're somebody that that has a sweet tooth and drinking a lot of coke or, you know, eating a lot of sugar. Maybe that alone changing that you'll see a benefit for your attention, for your energy levels. Find that out. These are all things that we're all able to do on our own. Yeah. And I know there's going to be people listening that are very type A, the one person optimizers. Once they have all that figured out, yeah, what's something that they can go above and beyond to increase the brain health and the longevity, you know, whether it's language learning, whether it's supplements, like other things that you would recommend to go above and beyond. Yeah. So I think above and beyond is adding because you just added a six pillar, which is learning like the new language learning. That is great that has good scientific support. Supplements on the other hand are famously unregulated and despite the popularity That is not something that I personally experiment with or take you don't take I don't take Supplements What I do do is I focus on now we have six pillars who you added Learning memory. I mean, I'm an academic. I teach students. I have to create new courses all the time I'm in the process of new learning All the time and so I consider myself lucky without doing anything. That's that's part of my job. Yeah And it's great what I have to do is manage my stress levels and balance myself so I don't I tend to My own type a to throw myself into work and not balance with more fun social times with with with real vacations giving myself a true break and so And you know what when I do that I feel so much better. I come back to work even better stronger And I'm not whining complaining that oh get wait until the summertime when I can take some time off Yeah, I want to shift to our brain health and just their brain overall with The molding of technology. Yeah, one of the things that's been talked about a lot Is the impact of air pods Mm-hmm And there's a video that I saw where they have this EMF monitor And it kind of placed it next to a MacBook and then an iPhone and then an air pod and then your Wi-Fi and I think the the air pod had more EMF Putting out then the Wi-Fi signals wow And this is something that I think over a billion people have just out the Bluetooth headsets that we're constantly wearing from the day Yeah What's been the study? What's your verdict on the impact of having these Bluetooth air pods or earphones in our in our in our ears For like 12 hours a day for some people. I have to be honest. I don't know the most recent studies about the Ear pod usage On the positive side if you're listening to podcasts and learning things That is good You don't have to put the iPods in you could you know wait till you're in a quiet place To do that, but of course. I know that is uh I walk around the world. I see all the yes. iPods around I don't know the science behind that but um I I think One of the wonderful things about that dark silent retreat that you you said that you went on must have been just get away from all that technology and and just be in nature be in Not have that interaction with so much electricity all the time. Yeah. Yeah. It was actually Kind of I felt a little bit off when I had to embed that it back into my Brain and started using my phone like I didn't like it. There was a part of me that fell so arrested Uh-huh, which is probably the natural state or brain or body should be in yes. Yes. Yes, and then to go back into All the electricity and the devices. Yeah, felt a little bit unnatural for a little bit and then of course life Life takes its course and all that stuff. Yeah, and we're we're constantly headed towards this direction, right? I'm not sure if you saw Elon Musk's Neuralink Just had their successful human patient Where they embedded the chips and it allowed them to control their whole bodies just using the mind and I think the mission for him is to start with people that have these disabilities, but then eventually But could potentially go into like super computers and literally embedding the machine with our brains I'm curious as a as a neuroscientist What is your take on that? Whether it's good whether it's bad Where do you see that going for society and for for humans when the brain is literally meshed with technology? Yeah, so I think that's incredible. That's an incredible uh success to take what we understand about motor reading the motor output of primary motor cortex. There's one strip primary motor cortex those cells Tell the rest of our body what to do and um, so what they're able to do is take lots of neuroscience of people studying just how the motor cortex works and decode that so so and have people think about I want to raise my right hand and be able to decode that and then have have the robot do that it's It's amazing that they were able to do that, but we are not in future times there is um Infection that comes with putting something foreign in the brain. I would never allow um Anybody to open up The dura mater which is the protective covering around my brain and expose it to the outside Unless I do a huge tremor or you know they really had to go in there. I'm terrified of them leaving anything in there um They've worked around that that doesn't mean it's gonna last for the rest of your life man It doesn't mean that there aren't in fact we know there were lots and lots of you know um bad Outcomes in in the patients before this successful one And they started smart they started with something that is doable that is a Add-on to people with disabilities. They're still a long way away from understanding how to optimize critical thinking creative thinking There's not one brain area important for creative thinking. Do you want chips all over your brain? I certainly wouldn't so um I think that is still in my opinion is still in the realm of science fiction I think it is incredible achievement what they did and um I think it will change lives for people that are paraplegic that can now operate with their thought processes motor motor patterns and and do that the leap between that and optimizing creative thinking is far And I'm not gonna say impossible, but it's far away in my opinion. Yeah Have you seen the black mirror episode about about this? You'll really love it It's a very dystopian view of it, but the idea there is this person is paralyzed and they get this brain chip impended embedded into their brains But then they realize oh it only works within a certain radius of their neighborhood Because they couldn't afford the premium version So they have to upgrade now if they want to go and travel outside of the country or outside of their city Wow, and then all of a sudden they have a power outage And then it stops working. Yeah, yeah, all of a sudden this person has a seizure in the middle of their of the trip Well, yeah, it's a very dystopian view of course, but you know it kind of points out a lot of the Things that could potentially happen When your brain is exposed to the outside world, especially when it's melted with AI. Yeah Yeah, there are lots of That all sounds real I will watch that is it's a really great episode When you really appreciate you and grateful for you for coming on and sharing all of these insights about the brain longevity I want to make sure people hear about your work and I we're gonna have all this linked down below of course But where can people find out more about you and learn about your work? Yeah Everybody should come to Wendy Suzuki.com All of my past books my current classes all my different projects talks Maltox Podcasts you'll be on there. We'll be on there. Yep Is there and the upcoming book on the topic of social connection and belonging Hopefully we'll be out in the next year or so is what we're she Amazing amazing awesome. We'll make sure people check that out when you appreciate you once again. Thank you Sean