Speaker 1: Guess what, mango, what's that? Well, so you remember a
Speaker 1: couple of years after we got out of school and
Speaker 1: the book Moneyball came out, and we were both fascinated
Speaker 1: by the premise. The basic idea was that the way
Speaker 1: so called experts were thinking about evaluating player performance was
Speaker 1: you know, seriously flawed and certainly very subjective at the least.
Speaker 1: And and I mean this wasn't just commentators and players.
Speaker 1: I mean this was scouts, coaches, nearly everyone. And that
Speaker 1: is until a few clubs, and especially the Oakland a
Speaker 1: started taking a much more analytical approach to how teams
Speaker 1: should be assembled, as they started looking at stats that
Speaker 1: had really kind of been ignored before or at least
Speaker 1: had taken a back seat, so things like on base
Speaker 1: percentage instead of batting average. Yeah, it was super interesting.
Speaker 1: And if I'm remembering correctly, like in those years that
Speaker 1: the A's made it to the playoffs, they were actually
Speaker 1: spending far less than half of what the Yankees were
Speaker 1: spending on their entire club. It really was incredible and
Speaker 1: just super interesting to see how quickly that much more
Speaker 1: analytical approach made its way into other sports like basketball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was well, now there's a new field that looks
Speaker 1: like it could significantly change sports again, at least according
Speaker 1: to the author of a new book called The Performance Cortex,
Speaker 1: how neuroscience is redefining athletic genius. And today we're lucky
Speaker 1: enough to be joined by the author of that book,
Speaker 1: Zach Sewan Brunn. He'll talk to us about why brains
Speaker 1: of certain great athletes like Steph Curry and Serena Williams
Speaker 1: and Tom Brady are just so different. Because while they're
Speaker 1: obviously an incredible shape and have spent countless hours working
Speaker 1: on their craft, we know there's more to it than that.
Speaker 1: How does a great hitter master the timing of drilling
Speaker 1: a nine fastball? How did great shooters manage to make
Speaker 1: half of their three pointers? And how does a great
Speaker 1: quarterback make such split second decisions with a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys twice their size coming in for the kill. So
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about today. Let's dive in. Hey,
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Manguesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof
Speaker 1: glass holding a tennis racket in one hand as he
Speaker 1: handles the control panel, and the other that's our friend
Speaker 1: and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah, he's been watching Serena Williams
Speaker 1: videos all morning, just trying to match her reaction time
Speaker 1: on service. Then he's getting pretty good. Actually, it's impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's time to sit down, Tristan. It's time to time
Speaker 1: to get focused here. So all right, Mago. As we
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top of the show, we're thrilled to
Speaker 1: be joined by the author of a new book called
Speaker 1: The Performance Cortex. How neuroscience is redefining athletic genius And
Speaker 1: as the book says, it's not about the million dollar
Speaker 1: arm anymore, It's about the million dollar brain. Zach Sean Bren,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thanks guys, thanks for having
Speaker 1: me so Zach, I know you've mentioned that the inspiration
Speaker 1: for this book came after your wife pointed you to
Speaker 1: this article about two neuroscientists working in Major League Baseball.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about what these guys were looking for
Speaker 1: and how this all sent you down a rabbit hole
Speaker 1: on this topic. Yeah, yeah, it was very serendipitous. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I had been loving through an alumni magazine
Speaker 1: and and my wife had been with me, and she
Speaker 1: noticed the small little blurb about these two Columbia University
Speaker 1: neuroscientists that were, as you said, they were starting to
Speaker 1: work in in with Major League Baseball kind of as
Speaker 1: a consulting basis, and they were still finishing up their
Speaker 1: their own neuroscience research at at Columbia. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a sportswriter. I had heard a little bit about
Speaker 1: brain gaming and cognitive training in sports, and obviously mindfulness
Speaker 1: and things like sports psychologists have been around for a while,
Speaker 1: but neuroscience seemed a little different to me, you know.
Speaker 1: And they were using uh, neuroscience imaging technique called e g.
Speaker 1: Electro and cephalogram to actually figurtively peel back to the
Speaker 1: skull and see what underneath the helmets of these hitters
Speaker 1: and how their brains are responding two pitches. Teams were
Speaker 1: really interested in this information, not just for a training
Speaker 1: purposes in terms of maybe getting hitters to improve their
Speaker 1: decision making at swinging at fastballs or curveballs or sliders,
Speaker 1: but also perhaps as a scouting method figuring out, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: what might be a baseline for what the reaction time
Speaker 1: of a major league or needs to be. You can
Speaker 1: then kind of fit other prospects or or screen for
Speaker 1: for future players based on that kind of baseline. And
Speaker 1: so it really presented this kind of new frontier in analytics,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a big topic because this was not
Speaker 1: so much a performance training device but an analysis tool
Speaker 1: that was that was very unique. It was interesting hearing
Speaker 1: you talk about, you know, the two m VP front
Speaker 1: runners in the American League last year. You've got jose
Speaker 1: Al Tove, who is when I think, like five ft
Speaker 1: six and maybe a hundred and sixty five pounds, and
Speaker 1: then you've got Aaron Judge, who's well over six ft
Speaker 1: six six ft seven or so two eighty two pounds,
Speaker 1: and they're both great players. But if you look at
Speaker 1: the two of them, you know, you you wouldn't know
Speaker 1: exactly what makes the two of them great because they
Speaker 1: look so different and obviously there is something different happening
Speaker 1: in their brain. And it's just interesting to me that
Speaker 1: this hasn't really been looked at before. Well, why do
Speaker 1: you think this isn't something that's been written about or
Speaker 1: or researched as much previously. Well, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: remember Moneyball, if remember the movie money Ball, and you
Speaker 1: remember the scouts talking of even back then about scouting
Speaker 1: players based on the good face, right and and you
Speaker 1: know what the guy was cancering where the guy had
Speaker 1: a girlfriend and uh and that was going to predict
Speaker 1: and I'll predict how they would turn out to be
Speaker 1: a major league players. And I was kind of laughed
Speaker 1: about in the movie. And some of that has changed
Speaker 1: with still so much of scouting and analytics. In fact,
Speaker 1: all of scouting an analytics to this point is all
Speaker 1: post talc narratives that are put together after the guy
Speaker 1: swings or you know, or a dozen't swing and takes
Speaker 1: a walk, and now those stats are compiled from there,
Speaker 1: so you know, these guys were doing something that was
Speaker 1: obviously occurring before any pitch reached home plate um. And
Speaker 1: I think you know what has taken some time for
Speaker 1: for teams to wrap their head around about this kind
Speaker 1: of technology is there's not quite enough data yet for
Speaker 1: them to say whether or not it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: useful to them. They they care about winning games. They
Speaker 1: don't want to put their players um through a lot
Speaker 1: of rigor. And you know these sorts of science, this
Speaker 1: sorts of analysis, it takes time. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to wear any e g. Cap for forty minutes clicking
Speaker 1: on a laptop keyboard, and you know, it's not something
Speaker 1: that players obviously want to spend a lot of time doing,
Speaker 1: especially if they're not even convinced that this is going
Speaker 1: to help them. You know, coming away from this and
Speaker 1: spending time with with Jason and Jordan's, I have no
Speaker 1: doubt that this type of technologies it's as it continues
Speaker 1: to get easier and easier to use, it's going to
Speaker 1: be more and more prevalent in in sports. Speaking of
Speaker 1: a of a different Jordan, I was actually in high
Speaker 1: school in the Birmingham area when Michael Jordan was playing
Speaker 1: for the White Sox double A team the Birmingham Barons then,
Speaker 1: and of course it was you know, a ton of
Speaker 1: hype around him being there, and it was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to go see these games and you're talking
Speaker 1: about one of the greatest athletes and one of the
Speaker 1: greatest competitors of all time. But it never quite clicked,
Speaker 1: you know, on the on the hitting front. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what we all expected, but you know, it
Speaker 1: was just interesting to see that it didn't quite come
Speaker 1: together in that way. And so would you say this
Speaker 1: probably did have something to do with you know, obviously
Speaker 1: there had been a lack of training over so many years,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, did he not quite have
Speaker 1: that thing or whatever that brain factor is to to
Speaker 1: have become the hitter he was hoping to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly right. And I mean this story of
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan as a baseball player has always been remembered,
Speaker 1: as you kind of said, it's kind of an embarrassment
Speaker 1: and a failure. And and I actually think that's really
Speaker 1: not not the case, and and and probably not fair.
Speaker 1: He certainly had the athleticism. He had he had the
Speaker 1: tools physically to become a a superstar in baseball obviously.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was the greatest afflete in the world.
Speaker 1: He had the quick hands, he had the coordination of
Speaker 1: his legs, and that's probably what enabled him to even
Speaker 1: that two hundred at the double A level, which you know,
Speaker 1: again that to me is incredible. Uh. And and that
Speaker 1: should not be perceived as a failure but really more
Speaker 1: of a marvel. But what he didn't have was what
Speaker 1: Jason and Jordan are studying, that he didn't have the
Speaker 1: decision making ability in his brain, the the regions of
Speaker 1: his brain that are necessary for hitting. Through studies, we've
Speaker 1: sort of gotten a bit of a clue into what
Speaker 1: regions might be necessary for hitting. Those regions had not
Speaker 1: been exercised in that way in in a dozen years,
Speaker 1: and in that in that short amount of time that
Speaker 1: one summer, they weren't going to be exercised enough for
Speaker 1: him to uh for him to make the Major League. Well,
Speaker 1: I always think the same thing, that is just stunning
Speaker 1: that he was able to walk into a different sport
Speaker 1: and compete even at that level. It's it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: But could you talk a little more specifically about what
Speaker 1: brain regions are crucial for baseball players. Motor studies are
Speaker 1: just inherently difficult to do if you're not taking a
Speaker 1: hitter and putting them into a batting cage. But they
Speaker 1: do try and simulate what it's like to be hitting
Speaker 1: a pitch, or at least responding to a pitch via
Speaker 1: a video game simulation. And they were able to stick
Speaker 1: several Columbia University baseball hitters into an m r I
Speaker 1: and see what was responding in their brains as these
Speaker 1: pitches were coming. And obviously compare those anomalousies, and they
Speaker 1: found two brain regions in particular that were of interest
Speaker 1: and that we're activating or their their their neurons were
Speaker 1: responding in a way that was different than novices. And
Speaker 1: the first was the supplementary motor area. This was particularly
Speaker 1: responsive when the hitters were deciding not the swing. And
Speaker 1: this made a lot of sense because in other studies
Speaker 1: involving the supplementary motor area, that region is particularly active
Speaker 1: in tasks where you have to inhibit your movement, such
Speaker 1: as when you just might be watching something but you're
Speaker 1: not you're not supposed to move. And so the fact
Speaker 1: that these hitters when they're not swinging and their supplementary
Speaker 1: motor area is lighting up, it's it told the researchers
Speaker 1: that they're kind of hitters are kind of on a
Speaker 1: hairpin trigger. You know, they don't have much time to react. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they have four milliseconds, and if you want to break
Speaker 1: it down, they actually have less than that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's half an eye blink. Yeah, it's incredible. And
Speaker 1: so they have to be ready to swing, you know,
Speaker 1: at at any moment. And so what is it that
Speaker 1: might separate the good hitters from the not so good hitters,
Speaker 1: and actually might not be their ability to swing, but
Speaker 1: it might be their ability to hold off and not swing.
Speaker 1: And so, um that where the supplementary motor area comes
Speaker 1: into fla. When the hitters were responding two pitches and
Speaker 1: we're we're swinging. The other area that that lit up
Speaker 1: primarily was this place called the fusiform gyrus um, which
Speaker 1: is part of the fusiform face area. It's involved with face.
Speaker 1: It's it's been shown another studies to be heavily involved
Speaker 1: with facial recognition. So when I am scanning a crowd,
Speaker 1: I can immediately notice my my mother's face in that crowd,
Speaker 1: you know, instantaneously, because I'm you know, I'm quote unquote
Speaker 1: an expert in seeing her face right. And so it's
Speaker 1: been shown in a lot of other studies on expertise,
Speaker 1: whether it's a bird watchers or far enthusiasts or chess players,
Speaker 1: that's the region that acts as the trigger to the
Speaker 1: motor system to jump start in its emotion. Those were
Speaker 1: primarily the two regions of interest that they found in hitters.
Speaker 1: And I think intuitively it kind of makes some sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you have some of those same
Speaker 1: skills as well. I mean, if Alta can hit a
Speaker 1: fastball and you're using that same region of the brain
Speaker 1: to recognize your mom and a crowd, that's really impressive.
Speaker 1: So congratulations on that. All right, well, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about my favorite sport. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the new book, The Performance Cortex, how
Speaker 1: neuroscience is redefining athletic genius. So Zach, I'm actually eager
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about Steph Curry because we're
Speaker 1: getting towards the end of the basketball season here. It's
Speaker 1: been an exciting one to watch. Hopefully he comes back
Speaker 1: from his injury and we'll have a really exciting playoff
Speaker 1: season to watch. But I do want to talk about
Speaker 1: him a bit because, you know, you look at two
Speaker 1: of the greatest basketball players on the planet. You've got
Speaker 1: Lebron James, who's at six ft eight two fifty pounds,
Speaker 1: and not to take anything away from his skill, but
Speaker 1: he's kind of a superhuman build. And then and then
Speaker 1: you take somebody like Steph Curry, and you know, if
Speaker 1: you didn't know him, and he just walked into your
Speaker 1: local pickup game, you wouldn't necessarily know that you were
Speaker 1: in the presence of maybe the greatest basketball player in
Speaker 1: the world until you saw him play, of course. And
Speaker 1: so I think he's what six ft three, not even
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds, So I'm curious, like what is going
Speaker 1: on in Curry's brain that makes him so great? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great question. I wish we knew, um,
Speaker 1: because you know, obviously, you know, he he has yet
Speaker 1: to avail himself of of of any neuroscience labs, and
Speaker 1: I know that neuroscientists would love to get her hand
Speaker 1: and get their hands on him, because you know, he
Speaker 1: is a great example of this what we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: and that is that you can't necessarily judge an athlete
Speaker 1: purely on his on his physical attributes. You know, Steph
Speaker 1: Curry coming out of college was considered too unathletic playing
Speaker 1: the NBA by scouts, and he was he dropped down
Speaker 1: and forwards because he was maybe too slow. They didn't
Speaker 1: think he can defend and um, you know, and they
Speaker 1: and they just were he was not big enough. He
Speaker 1: did not look like Lebron James, who comes to mind
Speaker 1: anytime you think about an NBA player, and yet he's
Speaker 1: been able to rise above above the rest of the league.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, if you were to take
Speaker 1: his his measurable still today and line them up with
Speaker 1: two other NBA guards, you wouldn't be able to pick
Speaker 1: him out of a lineup. As a sports fan, now,
Speaker 1: I've been focused my my whole life on oh the
Speaker 1: you know, the the speed, the agility, the wingspan of
Speaker 1: of of especially of NBA prospects, you know as they're
Speaker 1: coming out to all the scouts and analysts talk about
Speaker 1: and those are certainly characteristics and factors that can contribute
Speaker 1: the performance. Don't get me wrong, but but Steph Curry
Speaker 1: is a great example of this idea that it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not everything. I remember reading this thing about Steph
Speaker 1: carry playing horse with his brother Set then is that Dell?
Speaker 1: And that the games could go on for hours because
Speaker 1: they were all such good shooters. So funny, But staying
Speaker 1: with the basketball, I'm curious, um, you know, why is
Speaker 1: it that we never see an NBA player get anywhere
Speaker 1: to like a percent of making their free throws. It's
Speaker 1: called the charity stripe and and all that, like well,
Speaker 1: what is it about the muscle movements that that that
Speaker 1: makes this such a difficult task? Yeah, right, It always
Speaker 1: frustrates me, right that you know, these guys practice it
Speaker 1: so much and and uh, and yet they they're still
Speaker 1: unable to make a hundred, not even really get close.
Speaker 1: I think the the all time leaders is somewhere around
Speaker 1: or something. If you want to think about our our
Speaker 1: nervous system, the connections between the brain and the musky glature,
Speaker 1: as like telephone wires, um, the signals that get sent
Speaker 1: throughout our body are inherently afflicted with some jittery no ways.
Speaker 1: What it's called. It's called neuromotor noise. This is inherent
Speaker 1: to our system. It's just the biological reality. Um, everybody,
Speaker 1: everybody has it. And it's just a function of our
Speaker 1: systems not being perfect. You know, we're human, right. You
Speaker 1: can't make two of the same, exact, precise movements, as
Speaker 1: as much as you want to try, Um, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna make two movements of the same Nikolai Burnstein called
Speaker 1: this repetition. Without repetition, you can repeat movements that functionally
Speaker 1: look the same, such as swinging an axe and chopping
Speaker 1: a piece of wood. At all. You know, it looks
Speaker 1: the same and you will still hit the acts and
Speaker 1: the same mark, but the movement to actually get to
Speaker 1: that point will change. Uh. And and that's that is
Speaker 1: a function of the noisiness of our system. And it's
Speaker 1: the reason we have the game of darts. Right if
Speaker 1: if if we were if we were all moving and
Speaker 1: we had no noise and we move perfectly, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have the competition our darts because every one of our
Speaker 1: movements would just be be the same and be able
Speaker 1: to throw the dark in the same spot. And so
Speaker 1: you know, we can create robots that move without noise,
Speaker 1: but but not ourselves. We we have this um innately
Speaker 1: in our systems. And uh, it's a it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's the reason that these NBA guys, no matter
Speaker 1: how much they practice um you know, they they will
Speaker 1: they're going to have different movements on on different nights,
Speaker 1: and their free throws as a results are going to change.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day, you know, it'll it'll happen because somebody
Speaker 1: will have a less less noisy system than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. But to this point it hasn't happened. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's fascinating. To think about it. I never
Speaker 1: thought about it that way. I will say when shock
Speaker 1: shot free throws, it did pretty much always look like
Speaker 1: the same horrible line drive form. But but I guess
Speaker 1: even with Shack and it wasn't you know, moving to
Speaker 1: a different sport, you talk about tennis stars as being
Speaker 1: math gen uses. So so why do you say that? Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds a little strange. You know, tennis tennis in particular,
Speaker 1: when you were turning a serve in times incredibly quickly,
Speaker 1: and you're not just swinging at a at a ball
Speaker 1: that's coming in, you know, straight at you. You're also
Speaker 1: anticipating where this ball is going to have to bounce.
Speaker 1: You're anticipating what kind of bouts you're going to receive.
Speaker 1: And the more experience you have, and that's in that situation,
Speaker 1: the more accurate your probability will be. So Roger FEDERI,
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of experience and therefore he can
Speaker 1: he's going to be more accurate in in choosing the
Speaker 1: correct response for each serve. You can effectively say that
Speaker 1: that these these tennis experts are actually using math um
Speaker 1: to to figure out where where the ball is gonna
Speaker 1: be come, which line, likely with my own perspective because
Speaker 1: I was a mediocre tennis player and a mediocre math student.
Speaker 1: So I think that that add it all, it all
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. Actually, there there there was one side
Speaker 1: note to that I remember, and it makes more sense
Speaker 1: now thinking about this article that I remember from our
Speaker 1: Mental Flaws days, where a reader had asked the question,
Speaker 1: you know, does it actually help a player or give
Speaker 1: them an advantage when they grunt when they hit the
Speaker 1: tennis ball? And you know, I guess the studies were
Speaker 1: showing that that grunting actually does provide a slight advantage
Speaker 1: because it kind of muffles the sound of the ball
Speaker 1: hitting the racket, and it gives the opposing player maybe
Speaker 1: slightly less time or slightly less information. You know, to
Speaker 1: your point, Zach, that they are kind of using all
Speaker 1: of these calculations, even unconsciously, as they hear a ball
Speaker 1: hit a racket, to then decide and that millisecond, you
Speaker 1: know where the ball may be going or how fast
Speaker 1: it may be coming to them. So you know, the
Speaker 1: next time we get out there, I think I'm probably
Speaker 1: gonna scream a lot every time I hit the ball.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. Well, I mean, what it comes
Speaker 1: down to is our movement system, our motor system. It's
Speaker 1: actually costs slow, you know. And and this, this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that surprised me most is that,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of assumed that nervous signals, um,
Speaker 1: you know, occur quickly, they happen quickly, but it actually,
Speaker 1: you know, it's actually slower than than you would think.
Speaker 1: It takes time. And so when you're talking about responding
Speaker 1: to you know, a hundred and fifty mile an hour
Speaker 1: serve with all the pressure and and in front of
Speaker 1: in front of a stadium of a full of fans,
Speaker 1: and trying to you know, obviously hit an accurate return.
Speaker 1: You're not just trying to make contact. You have to respond,
Speaker 1: you have to return it to the right spot. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, all these things factor into the way that
Speaker 1: our brain has to make predictions about what's about to unfold.
Speaker 1: And this this happens all the time, and it especially
Speaker 1: happens in athletes. And the more experience you have in
Speaker 1: moving and responding to the tasks that you're shown, um,
Speaker 1: the the stronger the link between perception and action might be.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. There's an amazing study if
Speaker 1: you're as ago at in Rome, involving a few professional
Speaker 1: basketball players. I think they they gathered like six or
Speaker 1: eight professional Italian basketball players and they had them watch
Speaker 1: a clip of a sky shooting free throws, and they
Speaker 1: stopped the clip just as the ball was about to
Speaker 1: be released from the player's hands. They asked these subjects
Speaker 1: that these professional players, they asked them whether that the
Speaker 1: guy made the shot, and they found that the the
Speaker 1: professional basketball players were far more accurate in predicting whether
Speaker 1: the guy was going to make or miss the chop
Speaker 1: than even coaches who were also shots clip and other experts,
Speaker 1: you know, sportswriters and fans and so on, and so
Speaker 1: what that told them is that being actively involved in
Speaker 1: in your you know, whatever task you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: moving in that way, it actually enhances that link between
Speaker 1: your perceptual system and your motor system. You can essentially
Speaker 1: feel what you're seeing or simulate the movement that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing in response what you're seeing. Really interesting,
Speaker 1: and it speaks to the difference that these experts uh,
Speaker 1: the differences that these experts have than the novices than
Speaker 1: you or I sitting out there on the tennis courts
Speaker 1: just kind of tennis courts, just kind of reading and reacting.
Speaker 1: It's that's not what Federer is doing. I remember reading
Speaker 1: this one thing about uh, Andre Agassi was saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, almost like a goalie in on penalty shots,
Speaker 1: for certain servers who are serving so fast, you just
Speaker 1: have to pick a side, uh, you know, you'd either
Speaker 1: sort of prep for fourhand or back end. And he
Speaker 1: said that Boris Becker used to have a tell where
Speaker 1: he would actually stick his tongue out to the left
Speaker 1: or right side of his mouth as he was serving,
Speaker 1: and you could tell kind of where the serve was going,
Speaker 1: just which is kind of funny. Pretty great. Well, we've
Speaker 1: got a few more questions for you, Zach, but before
Speaker 1: we get to those, let's take a quick break. I
Speaker 1: was reading recently about the Sixers who have implemented this
Speaker 1: whole chef staff to make sure that their athletes are
Speaker 1: eating absolutely appropriately. You you see things about like Moneyball
Speaker 1: and how how teams are sort of evaluating different things
Speaker 1: to to recruit players, new metrics and stuff, and I'm
Speaker 1: sort of curious, like, how long will it be before
Speaker 1: teams start employing neuroscientists on on staff and and which
Speaker 1: sports do you see relying most on these advancements in
Speaker 1: the field. It's a good question. I mean, at this moment,
Speaker 1: almost every Major League baseball team has at least corresponded
Speaker 1: with Decerebro. So the neuroscientists from Columbia that I that
Speaker 1: I wrote about, so Serebra would tell you that baseball
Speaker 1: is kind of the perfect fit for what they're doing
Speaker 1: because it's a single interaction. Um, it's hitter verse picture
Speaker 1: and it's swinger, don't swing, let's go or don't go,
Speaker 1: And so being able to analyze that type of interaction
Speaker 1: is a lot easier than being able to say what
Speaker 1: Steph Curry is doing on a basketball court. Because he's
Speaker 1: got four different teammates, he's got five different opponents, He's
Speaker 1: moving in all different ways. It's a much more dynamic setting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think sports maybe like tennis and baseball
Speaker 1: kind of that go or no go seemed to be
Speaker 1: a better fit for for where neurosciences. You know, there
Speaker 1: was there was one more question that I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you before we let you go, and that has
Speaker 1: to do with this idea of intelligent skin. And I
Speaker 1: just thought this was fascinating. Whether we're talking about golf
Speaker 1: or or tennis or some of these other sports. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about this. It's something I'd
Speaker 1: really never thought about before. Yeah, yeah, me neither. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, our our our skin and our sense of
Speaker 1: touch is a very under represented area of science. The
Speaker 1: way that we kind of know that we're there's still
Speaker 1: a lot more to learn is looking at robotics. Robot
Speaker 1: You know, engineers and neuroscientists have spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time trying to figure out how to get robots they'll
Speaker 1: move like humans. We can get them to outthink humans. Um,
Speaker 1: I just look at how they you know they do
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy and in Chest and so on. But we
Speaker 1: haven't yet really gotten any robot that can actively move
Speaker 1: in a way that would have us be confused for
Speaker 1: a human. And uh, you know, all you have to
Speaker 1: do is YouTube robot opening doors and you'll see, you know,
Speaker 1: how far off we are. But what they're actually missing
Speaker 1: and what they think is the next step to that
Speaker 1: realism of in robotics is the input that perception from
Speaker 1: effectively the robot's skin until we Until we get there,
Speaker 1: I think it'll be hard to get a robot to
Speaker 1: to move like us, and I think it just tells
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about how how much of
Speaker 1: our our own skin is involved in in our movement.
Speaker 1: It's been fascinating and it's really interesting to think about
Speaker 1: how much this could change the way we think about
Speaker 1: sports and the way we think about these superstar athletes
Speaker 1: really as geniuses in their their own right. So the
Speaker 1: book is called The Performance Cortex, How neuroscience is redefining
Speaker 1: Athletic genius. But Zack, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, really a lot of fun. Thanks again for listening.
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