Speaker 1: Show Dr josup. Do you expect me to talk? Oh?
Speaker 1: This this isn't a standard interrogation. Inject him? Watch this now,
Speaker 1: poison truth Cerro, None of the above. No, this is
Speaker 1: something far more experimental. But perhaps a notorious secret agents
Speaker 1: such as yourself has heard of induced neuroplasticity. What you're
Speaker 1: talking of experimental neurotherapy drugs your math? Oh, neuroplasticity is
Speaker 1: far more than that. Yes, yes, this, this sort of
Speaker 1: treatment will soon revolutionize the way we deal with addictions
Speaker 1: and brain disease. It will allow adults of any age
Speaker 1: to learn new languages with the aptitude of a young child.
Speaker 1: But that's not why I've injected you with it. No,
Speaker 1: we've we've romanticized neuroplasticity. You see, we forget the importance
Speaker 1: of neuro stability. As children, we have an amazing ability
Speaker 1: to adapt to any environment, any language, were open to
Speaker 1: the world. We're also open to trauma. But then everything
Speaker 1: has to settle. We put aside those childish things and
Speaker 1: we become by a man doctors, secret agents. What do
Speaker 1: you want from me? Why? I want to change your life?
Speaker 1: Hans Rob the film Weight What what are you showing me?
Speaker 1: Jessup a YouTube playlist. Oh please, hours upon hours of
Speaker 1: let's call it informative content from some of the platforms
Speaker 1: leading personality No, not thish influencers. I'll tell you anything.
Speaker 1: For medians, no commentates, unboxes. No. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about another topic, sort of a follow up
Speaker 1: from Robert's visit this year to the World Science Festival.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about neuroplasticity. That's right. This, uh,
Speaker 1: this particular panel that that I attended, and this one
Speaker 1: is also available online. Will make sure there's a link
Speaker 1: to the YouTube video on the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode Acceptable in your Mind dot com. Uh. The particular
Speaker 1: panel was called Nuts and Bolts of Better Brains. It
Speaker 1: was hosted by Guy mccon, neurosurgeon, neuroscientist, Alvero Pascal Leoni, neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: uh Nim Tottenham developmental or psychologist, and Carlas Shots, a neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: and they discussed neuroplasticity, which is something that we've we've
Speaker 1: touched on on the show before, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have kind of a general concept of Yeah,
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity is one of those words that I think has
Speaker 1: suffered a lot of abuse in the press um because
Speaker 1: I mean, there are words that have a good meaning
Speaker 1: in science, and there's nothing wrong with the concept itself.
Speaker 1: But in today's neuroscience, neuroplasticity does have a meaning, and
Speaker 1: it does have a useful meaning. But you see it
Speaker 1: in a lot of hype and bs on the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I noticed, when when you do a search for
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity you want to read things about it, you get
Speaker 1: mostly content at one of two levels. Either content for
Speaker 1: experts and neuroscientists, like actual scientific literature that the average
Speaker 1: reader can't penetrate, and then you get also a whole
Speaker 1: lot of hype and bs that is telling you about
Speaker 1: I don't know, about how you're going to revolutionize your
Speaker 1: brain and you'll become like a child again and become
Speaker 1: a master of your own abilities. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: already become something of a buzzword, for instance, with with
Speaker 1: certain uh like supplement manufacturers, and take this neuroplasticity vitamin Yeah, okay, thanks,
Speaker 1: But but the neuroplasticity is a real thing. It is
Speaker 1: you can think of it simply as the brain's ability
Speaker 1: to adapt, and humans most incredible powers of neuroplasticity, especially
Speaker 1: during the so called critical periods of early childhood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things to think about this kind of
Speaker 1: weird is um how well humans adapt to such different
Speaker 1: life conditions. Like if you take most animals out of
Speaker 1: the environment and condition conditions that they're best adapted to,
Speaker 1: they don't do very well. There are some exceptions, but
Speaker 1: most of the time an animal has evolved to have
Speaker 1: certain instincts. It's got sort of like pretty hardwired behaviors.
Speaker 1: It can live, you know, it can be born where
Speaker 1: it is supposed to be born and live encountering the
Speaker 1: kind of stimuli it would normally encounter, and you know,
Speaker 1: it can do its thing that nature has shaped it for.
Speaker 1: But humans can do all kinds of stuff. We can
Speaker 1: live in the snow, we can live in the desert,
Speaker 1: we can live in cities, we can live in it plans.
Speaker 1: We can be farmers, we can be doctors. We can
Speaker 1: do so many different kinds of things with our brains.
Speaker 1: And there are no other animals like this really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the in the talk, they brought up the example of
Speaker 1: the loggerhead turtle as an example of a creature that
Speaker 1: is not a paragon of neuroplasticity but neuro stability. A
Speaker 1: creature that, upon birth is just ready to go and
Speaker 1: do a very specific thing exceedingly well in a very
Speaker 1: specific environment. But if you put some major obstacles in
Speaker 1: that turtle's way, the turtle probably would not find a
Speaker 1: way to adapt to those obstacles and survive around them.
Speaker 1: It would probably just not survive to adulthood, right, I
Speaker 1: mean in the turtle is a good example of that,
Speaker 1: because I mean with with with various sea turtles, we've
Speaker 1: seen examples of how just artificial lighting can screw up
Speaker 1: a very particular approach to going about its life cycle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but so your brain. One of the reasons your brain
Speaker 1: is so powerful compared to the brains of animals is
Speaker 1: that it can be adapted to so many different scenarios
Speaker 1: and so many different types of tasks depending on what
Speaker 1: sorts of environments you're exposed to when you're very young. Yeah,
Speaker 1: language is of course one of the great examples, and
Speaker 1: I think everyone has at least some awareness of this.
Speaker 1: Certainly anybody out there who's a parent has has read
Speaker 1: about this or experience this with their own children. Is
Speaker 1: that during certain critical periods, they have an amazing ability
Speaker 1: to not only pick up a language, but to just
Speaker 1: perfectly pick it up, to just breathe it in and
Speaker 1: and and become fluent in it without without any of
Speaker 1: the challenges that are generally encountered by adults trying to
Speaker 1: learn a second language. I mean, one of the ways
Speaker 1: that it's often put is that with great effort, and
Speaker 1: adult can learn to speak a language they don't already speak,
Speaker 1: but they will pretty much always speak it with an accent.
Speaker 1: Children can learn to speak all kinds of and can
Speaker 1: learn to speak multiple languages at the same time, and
Speaker 1: can generally learn to speak them without an accent. But then,
Speaker 1: of course it goes beyond this too, because there there's
Speaker 1: so many other things that are being absorbed during childhood,
Speaker 1: you know, the social norms, cultural norms, just how one
Speaker 1: interacts with your environment, and that has enabled humans to
Speaker 1: thrive all over the world, you know, obviously with technological
Speaker 1: aids in many cases, but still it it underlies the
Speaker 1: diversity and success of our species. Then again, there are
Speaker 1: some reasons to think that you don't want the brain
Speaker 1: to be sort of infinitely plastic, right, because if we
Speaker 1: consider plasticity the ability of the brain to adapt to
Speaker 1: new scenarios and change itself to work better, you also
Speaker 1: need cases where the brain knows what to do and
Speaker 1: does it instead of keeps being influenced and changing right right,
Speaker 1: and knows where to where to where to stop. You
Speaker 1: know what, what avenues to stop exploring because basically what
Speaker 1: happens is their neural circuitry branches out to master the
Speaker 1: skills necessary for survival. And then uh, and then after
Speaker 1: it does this, after you know, some of the branches
Speaker 1: have been prune back. Uh. You can think of it
Speaker 1: like a you know, like one of those shrub sculptures
Speaker 1: from the Shining from you know, the original novel. If
Speaker 1: you've read that, you know you you you prune everything down,
Speaker 1: cut it away until it's the appropriate shape. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing that the speakers in this event talk
Speaker 1: about is that the idea of pruning in childhood, how
Speaker 1: it starts off with way more connections than it needs,
Speaker 1: and then through this process it sort of pairs back
Speaker 1: the stuff that says, Okay, it looks like I'm not
Speaker 1: going to need that in life. We can just sever
Speaker 1: all those Yeah, I mean it kind of matches up
Speaker 1: with the cliche of the child who can grow up
Speaker 1: to be anything, right, which you know, obviously any given
Speaker 1: child can't grow up to be absolutely anything. But there
Speaker 1: is a there. There is a lot of room for
Speaker 1: specialization and and and and diverse growth there. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have natural tendencies and natural potentials, and some of that
Speaker 1: is genetic. But then also we were extremely adaptable as children, right.
Speaker 1: But then of course in neural stability has to kick in.
Speaker 1: That's important too, a necessary balance in the human brain. Um,
Speaker 1: you're going to grow up and become this thing we
Speaker 1: call an adult. But what if I am Peter Pan
Speaker 1: and I don't want to grow up and be an
Speaker 1: adult because growing up and being in a delt and
Speaker 1: having neuro stability limits my potential. What if I decide
Speaker 1: I don't want to be somebody who only speaks English.
Speaker 1: I want to be somebody who speaks Chinese and speaks
Speaker 1: French and speaks the click languages. And you know what
Speaker 1: if I want to speak all those languages without an accent,
Speaker 1: why can't I do that. Yeah, I want to have
Speaker 1: infinite potential again. I want to go back to I
Speaker 1: want to be able to grow up to be anything.
Speaker 1: You know. I think we've all had moments like that
Speaker 1: where we we we we look at where we are
Speaker 1: and we think, well, if I could go back and
Speaker 1: open myself up to this language or this ability or
Speaker 1: what have you, then I would love to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, or or just the idea that nobody wants to.
Speaker 1: You don't want to feel stagnant. You want to feel
Speaker 1: like you're continuing to grow and uh and you know,
Speaker 1: keep up with the young ones. And so scientists have
Speaker 1: continually looked to possible ways of essentially rewidening the doorways
Speaker 1: of of neuroplasticity. That's one of the metaphors it's often used, right,
Speaker 1: is that when you're a child out the door is open,
Speaker 1: the window is open for you to grasp onto anything.
Speaker 1: But then depending on who's throwing the metaphor round, you
Speaker 1: can say, well it closes when you become an adult,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really closes. It gets sort of like
Speaker 1: it gets almost closed, right, it narrows, And so we've
Speaker 1: looked to ways to to widen it in adulthood, and
Speaker 1: and it goes beyond this mirror um, you know, intellectual
Speaker 1: vanity as well. Right, it's not just Peter Pan saying
Speaker 1: I want this, I want that. There's also the idea
Speaker 1: of treating problems in the adult brain by reintroducing plasticity, right,
Speaker 1: it would it would give us a way to treat
Speaker 1: various neurodegenerative disorders, anxiety, depression, even post traumatic stress disorder.
Speaker 1: Like anytime there's a there's a potential for for growth
Speaker 1: and change, positive growth and change in the brain to
Speaker 1: help with a given condition. Neuroplasticity is often brought up
Speaker 1: as a as a potential cure. But it's a challenge
Speaker 1: to do this sort of thing. As a Columbia University
Speaker 1: develop antal psychologist Dr Nim Totenham, who we were referenced already,
Speaker 1: as she stated in the in that World Science Festival discussion,
Speaker 1: the brain actually extends, expends a lot of energy to
Speaker 1: keep critical periods from reopening. Yeah, we there there seems
Speaker 1: to be some logic underlying this, this move the evolution
Speaker 1: took right, it says, you know, you don't stay a
Speaker 1: plastic child forever. At some point the brain needs to
Speaker 1: figure out what to be and be that right. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons we're calling this episode the
Speaker 1: Dark Side of neuroplasticity. Not that neuroplasticity he necessarily has
Speaker 1: this deep, dark underbelly, but the sort of public awareness
Speaker 1: tends to lean so heavily towards neuroplastics is just an
Speaker 1: absolute good. I want as much of it as I
Speaker 1: can get. We want to counter the hype. Neuroplasticity is
Speaker 1: a good thing, but it's also not in uh, it's
Speaker 1: not a good thing in every possible case, in every
Speaker 1: possible sense. Right, And towards the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: Will will speculate a little bit and look at some
Speaker 1: some speculation from experts about some of the possible pitfalls
Speaker 1: could be. What are some and even what are some
Speaker 1: of the black mirror esque possibilities in a world full
Speaker 1: of neuroplasticity inducing drugs? Yeah, now the question about these drugs, though,
Speaker 1: is still wide open. I mean it's sort of uh.
Speaker 1: I hate to use the metaphor the wild West. What's
Speaker 1: a better metaphor for an arena in which there is
Speaker 1: still much much new ground being forged? Welcome to the
Speaker 1: jungle Baby. How about some spelunking. We're spelunking. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: are close confines, though, I guess okay, I think I
Speaker 1: think wild West is still pretty good. Well whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're still trying to figure out what kinds
Speaker 1: of drugs might do this, what side effects they might have,
Speaker 1: if they are effective at doing it, And we'll talk
Speaker 1: more later in the episode about what some of these
Speaker 1: specific drugs might be. Yeah, because to master neuroplus this day,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to establish the molecules that close
Speaker 1: the doors. I mean, the thing is, it is possible
Speaker 1: to extend critical periods and manipulate them, and experts do,
Speaker 1: in fact think that we'll one day be able to
Speaker 1: do this with a pill, with some sort of medication.
Speaker 1: So it's not a question of of if. It's a
Speaker 1: question of when the groundwork is already being laid for this. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just how are we gonna be ready for it
Speaker 1: when it happens. Well, I think we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then when we come back we will
Speaker 1: discuss a few things about the history of the idea
Speaker 1: of neuroplasticity. Than alright, we're back. So Charles Darwin actually
Speaker 1: offered some thoughts about how the brain changes in response
Speaker 1: to the environment. In his book The Descent of Man,
Speaker 1: which published in eighteen seventy four, and though we should
Speaker 1: note that he did not use the term plasticity, he
Speaker 1: did sort of write about the idea of of the
Speaker 1: brain adapting. He wrote, quote, I have shown that the
Speaker 1: brains of domestic rabbits are considerably reduced in bulk in
Speaker 1: comparison with those of the wild rabbit or hair, and
Speaker 1: this may be attributed to their having been closely confined
Speaker 1: during many generations, so that they have exerted their intellect, instincts, senses,
Speaker 1: and voluntary movements. But little uh note that he's imagining
Speaker 1: this adaptation of the brain taking place over multiple generations
Speaker 1: through inheritance, which is very different from the kind of
Speaker 1: plasticity that we're talking about, which takes place within a
Speaker 1: single body within a single lifetime. But he is at
Speaker 1: least offering an image they're of saying like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: the brain can kind of be molded to what it
Speaker 1: best does given its environmental circumstances. Right if you if
Speaker 1: you're a wild hair, and you need to be crafty
Speaker 1: and wily and use all your senses to survive out
Speaker 1: in the brush. Uh, you you will grow these bulky brains.
Speaker 1: But if you're a domestic hair and all you do
Speaker 1: is sit around and get fed, then you don't need
Speaker 1: all that stuff and the brain will adapt. This touches
Speaker 1: on a fact that we've discussed before, and that is
Speaker 1: that that the that the brain like evolution is a
Speaker 1: miser and that's cheap. Yeah, it's it's cheap. It wants
Speaker 1: the most economic model for functionality. It is. It is
Speaker 1: the Ebenezer Scrooge of the body. No, the whole body
Speaker 1: is cheap. Actually, you know it makes sense. You don't
Speaker 1: want wasting energy in an environment where energy is hard
Speaker 1: to come by. Living in a world of technology and abundance. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we should stop to think, how, you know,
Speaker 1: if if you have food to eat, if you're not
Speaker 1: wondering where your next meal comes from, you should think
Speaker 1: about how lucky you are. But you should also think
Speaker 1: about how, in many ways your body and the bodies
Speaker 1: of every other creature in the world, we're sort of
Speaker 1: designed for scenarios where you would be constantly living on
Speaker 1: the edge of starvation. But back to neuro plasticity. So
Speaker 1: the term plasticity emerged from the work of American psychologist
Speaker 1: William James who lived eighteen forty two to nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: and James defined it the following way. He said, it's
Speaker 1: quote the possession of a structure weak enough to yield
Speaker 1: an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes sense. It's ideal for a young
Speaker 1: child to be open to their environment and not so
Speaker 1: open that they're just completely overwhelmed. Right, So I want
Speaker 1: to read a quote from William James from his from
Speaker 1: his seminal work on psychology, where he started deposit that
Speaker 1: the brain might have some kind of might have some
Speaker 1: kind of like changeable structure. So he says, quote, if
Speaker 1: habits are due to the plasticity of materials to outward agents,
Speaker 1: we can immediately see to what outward influences, if to any,
Speaker 1: the brain matter is plastic, not too mechanical pressures, not
Speaker 1: to thermal changes, not to any of the forces to
Speaker 1: which all the other organs of our body are exposed.
Speaker 1: For nature has so blanketed and wrapped the brain about
Speaker 1: that the only impressions that can be made upon it
Speaker 1: are through the blood on the one hand, and the
Speaker 1: sensory nerve roots on the other. And it is to
Speaker 1: the infinitely attenuated currents that pour in through these latter
Speaker 1: channels that the hemispherical cortex shows itself to be so
Speaker 1: peculiarly susceptible. The currents, once in, must find a way out.
Speaker 1: In getting out, they leave their traces in the paths
Speaker 1: which they take. The only thing they can do, in short,
Speaker 1: is to deepen old paths or to make new ones.
Speaker 1: And the whole plasticity of the brain sums itself up
Speaker 1: in two words when we call it an organ in
Speaker 1: which currents pouring in from the sense organs make with
Speaker 1: extreme facility paths which do not easily disappear. For, of course,
Speaker 1: a simple habit, like every other nervous event, the habit
Speaker 1: of snuffling, for example, or putting one's hands into one's
Speaker 1: pockets or biting one's nails, is mechanically nothing but a
Speaker 1: reflex discharge, and its anatomical substratum must be a path
Speaker 1: in the system. The most complex habits, as we shall
Speaker 1: presently see more fully, are from the same point of view,
Speaker 1: nothing but concatenated discharges of the nerve centers, due to
Speaker 1: the presence there of systems of reflex paths so organized
Speaker 1: as to wake each other up successively, the impression produced
Speaker 1: by one muscular contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke
Speaker 1: the next, until a final impression inhibits the process and
Speaker 1: closes the chain. So that was very forward thinking on
Speaker 1: William James's part. He's so, he's got a very rudimentary
Speaker 1: nineteenth century understanding of brain function here, but it does
Speaker 1: get some some interesting basic insights right. One of them
Speaker 1: is that habits or tendencies of the brain consist of
Speaker 1: a kind of reinforcing of pathways of activities. Another is
Speaker 1: that complex brain functions are built out of many less
Speaker 1: complex brain functions happening together in sequence. Another is that
Speaker 1: the potential and predispositions of an individual brain like your brain,
Speaker 1: can be changed based on repeated interaction with chemicals in
Speaker 1: the blood or with the data of the senses. And
Speaker 1: that last part is just as a tangent one of
Speaker 1: those utterly mundane facts that I often have to stop
Speaker 1: and force myself to be amazed by over and over again, Like,
Speaker 1: think about this. It sounds kind of stupid to say,
Speaker 1: but by making acoustic vibrations in the air with my
Speaker 1: mouth that you can hear or by like drawing a
Speaker 1: picture on a chalkboard and putting it in front of
Speaker 1: your eyes. I can literally change the physical configuration of
Speaker 1: your brain. I make changes inside your skull by doing
Speaker 1: things you can see in here. Isn't that bizarre? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean if you and if you extend it to
Speaker 1: written language, you can think, oh, well, somebody who wrote something, uh,
Speaker 1: inscribed something down a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: They can speak across all those uh, those dead millennia,
Speaker 1: and they can speak right to our brain and make
Speaker 1: changes in it. It's unbelievable. Now. I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: the term plasticity in the context of neuroscience had been
Speaker 1: used to mean a lot of different things. There was
Speaker 1: one particular paper I looked at about this by Giovanni
Speaker 1: Berluki and Henry book Tool from two thousand nine and
Speaker 1: Experimental Brain Research, and they talk about how the term
Speaker 1: plasticity has been used over the past century to refer
Speaker 1: to quote changes in neural organization, which may account for
Speaker 1: various forms of behavioral modifiability, either short lasting or enduring,
Speaker 1: including maturation, adaptation to a mutable environment, specific and unspecific
Speaker 1: kinds of learning, and compensatory adjustments in response to functional
Speaker 1: losses from aging or brain damage. So that that's a
Speaker 1: lot of different meanings encompassed in the idea of plasticity,
Speaker 1: but it does sort of apply to all of those,
Speaker 1: so it's subject to generalization. But then also is sort
Speaker 1: of uh is a turn It sort of refers to
Speaker 1: general change in the brain. Yeah, a kind of adaptation
Speaker 1: that has come to be associated with pressures put on
Speaker 1: the brain from the environment. Right, So, with modern techniques,
Speaker 1: we've discovered that the way these pathways are forged and
Speaker 1: reinforced in the brain depends largely on the crucial element
Speaker 1: of the synapps or you know, the bridge of space
Speaker 1: that connects to nerve cells and allows impulses to pass
Speaker 1: between the cells. And in eighteen three, the Italian neuropsychiatrist
Speaker 1: Eugenio Tanzi first proposed that the basis of practiced based
Speaker 1: learning and associative memory was these connections between nerve cells
Speaker 1: in the brain. Because Tanzi knew that there are other
Speaker 1: scientists who had observed the slowing of the passage of
Speaker 1: nerve impulses through the gray matter in the brain, and
Speaker 1: so he hypothesized that maybe what's going on in that
Speaker 1: slow down is that there's difficulty for the impulses to
Speaker 1: cross the gaps between neurons, these gaps that we now
Speaker 1: call synapses or synaptic fissures. And based on that assumption,
Speaker 1: Tansi argued that the way the brain adapts, the way
Speaker 1: it learns through practice and creates associations between things, the
Speaker 1: way it sort of enacts its plastic potential is by
Speaker 1: a kind of exercise. When you perform a repetitious activity
Speaker 1: in the brain, the same pathways of neurons repeatedly communicate
Speaker 1: with each other, and by doing this you cause a
Speaker 1: kind of hypertrophy or strengthening of the connections between those
Speaker 1: specific neurons. The more you do a certain thing in
Speaker 1: the brain, the easier than that thing becomes to do
Speaker 1: in the brain. And then the next year, in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, the Spanish neuroscientists Santiago Ramonikahal, who I've thought
Speaker 1: before we should do a whole episode on this guy.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he also speculated that learning was based on the
Speaker 1: creation and strengthening of connections between neurons. I feel like
Speaker 1: this is something that has been I think over the years,
Speaker 1: it's just been so well demonstrated or not really demonstrated,
Speaker 1: but illustrated with animations and and uh and and art
Speaker 1: that I have it like well ingrained in my head.
Speaker 1: Like when people talk start talking about synapses firing, I
Speaker 1: picture it. And maybe I also kind of think of
Speaker 1: it in terms of of playing an instrument, like the
Speaker 1: physical act of playing an instrument, of linking um, you
Speaker 1: know of finger movements on say a trumpet or French
Speaker 1: more and to the note that you're playing, and then
Speaker 1: linking those in order to create uh, the notes in
Speaker 1: a particular tune, which of course is both literally a
Speaker 1: synaptic learning exercise but also kind of an illustration of
Speaker 1: what's going on, like making this, connecting it to that
Speaker 1: and then leading onto the next note. Yeah, we we've
Speaker 1: learned this in the modern age, and so it's easy
Speaker 1: for us to picture, but we should appreciate how how
Speaker 1: interesting of an insight this was for for the people
Speaker 1: at the time, because there were also competing hypotheses in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, like Berlukian book
Speaker 1: Toll show that in the first couple of decades of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century that this idea of the sort of
Speaker 1: learning through quote reduced resistance that exercise synapses. Uh that
Speaker 1: that idea was pretty widely accepted in that first couple
Speaker 1: of decades, and then for a while it really went
Speaker 1: into decline. This the synaptic model of plasticity due to
Speaker 1: arise in the popularity of competing ideas about all this
Speaker 1: weird stuff about the equipotential whole version of the brain.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the late nineteen forties it came back.
Speaker 1: It was sort of rehabilitated by scientists like the Polish
Speaker 1: neuroscientists Jersey Konorski and the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, and
Speaker 1: Hebb was particularly influential, and then experimental evidence accumulated during
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, especially during the mid and later twentieth century,
Speaker 1: from the likes of David Hubel and Torsten VISal, Michael Merzenek,
Speaker 1: and Eleanor McGuire. Now, the work of each of those
Speaker 1: individuals is is fascinating, and I would love to come
Speaker 1: back and look at them in greater detail. There's some
Speaker 1: wonderful work they're regarding, Uh, you know, how how we
Speaker 1: see the world. I mean, some of the very basic
Speaker 1: questions about the human experience. How how do we perceive
Speaker 1: the world and how is it processed in the brain
Speaker 1: are explored by by by their work. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is there's still something of a controversy about exactly
Speaker 1: how plastic the adult human brain is, if much at all.
Speaker 1: Like for most of the history of neuroscience, up until
Speaker 1: very recently, a lot of experts believed that the human
Speaker 1: adult brain had almost no plasticity, you know, that it
Speaker 1: was fixed and stable. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: obvious that adults can learn new things and adapt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can change, and then we don't have to undergo
Speaker 1: you know, catastrophic brain injury for it to happen, right, So,
Speaker 1: exactly how much potential for change in plasticity is there
Speaker 1: in the adult brain and in what areas like? It
Speaker 1: appears much easier for adults to learn and adapt in
Speaker 1: some ways than it does in others. Language acquisition, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about as a classic example, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: children are just so so much better at learning a
Speaker 1: language than adults are. Another one is certain aspects of
Speaker 1: music learning. Have you read about perfect pitch? Probably, yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to get it early or you're not gonna
Speaker 1: You're not gonna get it later on. Yeah, This is
Speaker 1: a commonly cited example Robert sing a middle c oh,
Speaker 1: I I don't. I don't do music like that, Joe.
Speaker 1: Almost no adults do unless you've you've trained on it
Speaker 1: before you were you know, roughly six years old. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you have this skill known as perfect pitch,
Speaker 1: you should be able to recognize or produce not just
Speaker 1: tones relative to other tones, but like you could call
Speaker 1: out a note and the person would know what that
Speaker 1: pitch actually was. They could sing it, or they could
Speaker 1: recognize it in hearing it. Yeah. I My my reaction
Speaker 1: to that question is the same as the other day
Speaker 1: when my son asked me what Thursday plus Thursday equals,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, I can't. That just broke my
Speaker 1: brain a little bit to even try and answer that question.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a three key Thursday probably, but yeah.
Speaker 1: So Supposedly, the idea is if you teach children to
Speaker 1: recognize pitches in an absolute sense before they're roughly six
Speaker 1: years older, so they can potentially acquire this skill. It's
Speaker 1: just like you've got to You've got to get going
Speaker 1: within that window. Yeah, I feel like I'm I'm wasting
Speaker 1: my time reading the hobbit to my my son, we
Speaker 1: should be we should be working on this pitch thing. Well,
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of things potentially like this that
Speaker 1: you don't even know about. That maybe you should be
Speaker 1: teaching your son at this article age, you know, before
Speaker 1: the window doesn't close but gets very narrow. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there is a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of discussion of this out there in parenting forums and
Speaker 1: actual you know, pure viewed uh child rearing material just
Speaker 1: about Yeah, these are the ages of childhood when you
Speaker 1: want to throw a bunch of different activities at them.
Speaker 1: You want them to have some sort of musical training,
Speaker 1: some sort of uh training in another language, etcetera like this,
Speaker 1: This is when the this is when the windows are open.
Speaker 1: So you want to just throw as much stuff there
Speaker 1: there as possible. But I mean, wouldn't it be great
Speaker 1: if you could be like that again as an adult,
Speaker 1: As we were talking about earlier, the desire to be
Speaker 1: Peter Pan, aren't are there things that we could do
Speaker 1: to make the adult brain a learning and adaptation machine
Speaker 1: like the young child's brain. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: been asking that question, and so I guess that's what
Speaker 1: we should explore now. The idea of induced neuroplasticity and adults.
Speaker 1: That's right. And as as we said earlier, it's it's
Speaker 1: generally accepted that we can do this. It's it's what
Speaker 1: we have to do is figure out exactly how to
Speaker 1: do it. It's it's basically we want to be neural
Speaker 1: puppet masters, but we are only just beginning to really
Speaker 1: understand where all the strings are and then what happens
Speaker 1: when you pull those strings? And then how do you
Speaker 1: pull those strings? Do you just yank on them? Or
Speaker 1: is it more of a delicate thing. We were trying
Speaker 1: to to to master an art form of puppetry that
Speaker 1: is currently beyond us. Right, It's not can we do
Speaker 1: this at all? We're pretty sure we will be able
Speaker 1: to do this to some extent. It's how well can
Speaker 1: you do it? How well can you target it for
Speaker 1: the kinds of things you want to do with it,
Speaker 1: how well can you avoid negative side effects coming with it?
Speaker 1: All that kind of stuff, and what are the best
Speaker 1: drugs to do it with? Right? And there there have
Speaker 1: been some experiments involving induced neuro plasticity and mice. A
Speaker 1: lot of those yeah, and uh, you know, and those
Speaker 1: show a lot of promise in my understanding. But then
Speaker 1: anytime we're looking at experiments with with mice, Yes, mice
Speaker 1: are are our great stand ins for human physiology, but
Speaker 1: they are, of course are not humans. So and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of differences between rodents and humans, especially
Speaker 1: in the brain. Yes, so there are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions that are that are not really going to be
Speaker 1: answered until we we we better understand what we're doing
Speaker 1: with the mice and also get more and more into
Speaker 1: actually testing some of these treatments on humans. Well, let's
Speaker 1: look at a couple of examples of research on drug
Speaker 1: induced neuro plasticity. Yeah, and uh, you know, we're certainly
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to cover all of it. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, a lot of the research out there
Speaker 1: is either is either the deep end of the pool
Speaker 1: or the obscenely shallow end of the pool. And uh,
Speaker 1: and it's sometimes difficult to make sense even for us,
Speaker 1: of the deeper end of the neuroscientific pool. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: try to walk you up just to your armpits or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this first study actually emerged this year. So psychedelic drugs
Speaker 1: have long been associated with an opening of the mind, right,
Speaker 1: and a June two, eighteen study published in Cell Press
Speaker 1: points to evidence of psychedelic induced neuroplasticity in rats and flies,
Speaker 1: and UM, I have to say, I found this very
Speaker 1: interesting too, because there's actually a part in Alan Moore's
Speaker 1: v for Vendetta, the original graphic novel. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is represented in the film version, but you see
Speaker 1: one of the main characters take l s D at
Speaker 1: the side of a government resettlement camp, UH, kind of
Speaker 1: opening himself up to the full horror of the place
Speaker 1: and his connection to it. It's a it's a very
Speaker 1: powerful scene, but but it doesn't directly relate to this study.
Speaker 1: So this University of California Davis study examine the effects
Speaker 1: of several drugs in test tube and animal experience experiments,
Speaker 1: including M d m A, d m T, l s D,
Speaker 1: and the ephetamine d o I, and they found that
Speaker 1: d o I, d m T, and L s D
Speaker 1: in particular made neurons more likely to branch out and develop.
Speaker 1: Based on their findings that use, Davis team thinks that
Speaker 1: UH psychedelic compounds such as DO d O I, d
Speaker 1: m T analyst may eventually pave the way for prescription
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity drugs. It's just all a matter of capitalizing on
Speaker 1: their ability to expand the very neural circuits observed to
Speaker 1: atrophy during depression, anxiety, and PTSD, so they observe functional
Speaker 1: and structural changes in cortical neurons for both vertebrates and
Speaker 1: invertebrates exposed to psychedelic compounds and isolated activity to the
Speaker 1: to the protein called brain derived neurotrophic factor or b
Speaker 1: d n F, and when b d n F was blocked,
Speaker 1: the psychedelics lost their ability to promote neural growth. And
Speaker 1: the case proved to be the same with the m
Speaker 1: tour signaling pathway, which plays a role in creating proteins
Speaker 1: for new sign apps formation. If you think of the
Speaker 1: brain as a complex map, then this research places two
Speaker 1: key markers on what could one day prove the pathway
Speaker 1: to induce neuro plasticity. The judging from what I've read
Speaker 1: that it seems like there could be a lot of
Speaker 1: pathway yeah, oh yes, And senior author and UC Davis
Speaker 1: Assistant chemistry Professor David E. Olsen on this the stresses
Speaker 1: that there's there's still a lot to learn here and
Speaker 1: it is team's experiments didn't entail human trials, of course,
Speaker 1: but it but it is enough to suggest that the
Speaker 1: mind expanding aspects of psychedelics as we understand them may
Speaker 1: one day adis in creating new treatments. So I want
Speaker 1: to underline that the researchers here are not saying go
Speaker 1: and take a bunch of LSD and then try and
Speaker 1: learn Mandarin or develop perfect pitch. They're saying that there
Speaker 1: are potentially things in these substances that we could utilize
Speaker 1: to create far better, far more targeted substances in the future. Now,
Speaker 1: though there are some results indicating the possibility of induced
Speaker 1: neuroplasticity and adults and adult humans, these are preliminary intentatives.
Speaker 1: We want to keep stressing this is one of those
Speaker 1: areas where I would really expect to continue to see
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy about the validity of results over
Speaker 1: the next decade or the next couple of decades or so. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's important to stress amidst all of
Speaker 1: the hype and the advertising and all that about neuroplasticity
Speaker 1: become a master of your brain, that that we're not
Speaker 1: there yet. This stuff is not ready for prime time. Right.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who made this comparison. But I believe
Speaker 1: it was pointed out that when when we tinker with
Speaker 1: the with the way our brain and even the way
Speaker 1: our bodies work, especially with with various pharmaceuticals, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like trying to change the oil in a car
Speaker 1: by just dumping the motor oil direct, like opening the
Speaker 1: hood and dumping it into the engine. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: things are not nearly as targeted as they as we
Speaker 1: want them to be. Yeah, that's great, that's a good metaphor.
Speaker 1: So I want to cite a few claims a few
Speaker 1: other claims about induced neuroplasticity and adult humans that have
Speaker 1: appeared in the press. One is uh one what I've
Speaker 1: seen referenced a lot is a article and New Scientist
Speaker 1: by Helen Thompson about neuroplasticity drugs, and one of the
Speaker 1: research teams that Thompson talks about is led by the
Speaker 1: Harvard Professor of Neurology, Takeo. Hench, who has been doing
Speaker 1: one one line of research, and the basic gist is
Speaker 1: that one of the physiological changes that appears to close
Speaker 1: the window of neuroplasticity and children and bring on this
Speaker 1: period of adult neuro stability is the proliferation of a
Speaker 1: particular enzyme in the brain, the enzyme histone d A
Speaker 1: claise or h d a C, and according to Thompson,
Speaker 1: this enzyme primarily serves to inhibit the activation and deactivation
Speaker 1: of genes in our DNA. So we know that genes
Speaker 1: and the DNA. It's not like all the genes are
Speaker 1: all doing their thing all at the same time. Genes
Speaker 1: can be activated and deactivated, turned on and turned off,
Speaker 1: and apparently the proliferation of the enzyme h D a
Speaker 1: C prevents this turning on and off. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: settle down, stop flipping the switches. So if this enzyme
Speaker 1: is associated with the end of the neuroplasticity window, what
Speaker 1: if we could simply inhibit this enzyme right, would plasticity
Speaker 1: open back up? So in two thousand ten, Hinge and
Speaker 1: colleagues found uh found this to be the case in
Speaker 1: rodents at least. They used a drug called valproate, which
Speaker 1: is a drug that specifically restricts his stone d c
Speaker 1: LAS or h d a C and usually valparade is
Speaker 1: used to treat conditions like epilepsy and bipolar disorder. In
Speaker 1: this case, it appeared to cure amblyopia in adult rodents,
Speaker 1: which is often caused by reduced sight in one eye
Speaker 1: during the period in childhood when the senses are developing.
Speaker 1: If you don't fix it during that neuroplastic window in childhood,
Speaker 1: you're usually stuck with it as an adult. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is something that played into some of those twentieth
Speaker 1: century uh UM discoveries related to plasticity that I referenced earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but would this kind of thing actually work in humans?
Speaker 1: So Hinge work together with Alan Young at King's College,
Speaker 1: London and some other colleagues to see if this drug
Speaker 1: could allow adults to acquire a skill it's usually only
Speaker 1: acquired during that highly plastic period of childhood. And they
Speaker 1: went with perfect pitch again uh calling out that that
Speaker 1: note knowing exactly what the note is not relative to
Speaker 1: other notes, but just hearing it or being able to
Speaker 1: produce it. So they did a study with twenty four
Speaker 1: men who had no perfect pitch, no musical training, and
Speaker 1: these men were treated with either valporoid or placebo daily
Speaker 1: for about two weeks, and during the second half of
Speaker 1: the treatment period they watched training videos on how to
Speaker 1: identify absolute musical tones by associating them with names like
Speaker 1: Sarah and Jimmy. The reason they did names was to
Speaker 1: rule out any potential pre existing associations that the men
Speaker 1: might have with pitches in the note names. But I
Speaker 1: like the idea of it's like, you know, sing me
Speaker 1: a middle Jimmy. On the last day of the trial,
Speaker 1: the group was given a test. They had to listen
Speaker 1: to eighteen notes and see if they could correctly identify
Speaker 1: the absolute pitches by name. The control group who took
Speaker 1: the placebo got an average of about three point five notes,
Speaker 1: which was performance at chance. The test group who took
Speaker 1: the valpor it got a little over five notes right
Speaker 1: on average, which was significantly better than chance. So this
Speaker 1: was a small study, maybe kind of small effect, but
Speaker 1: it caught plenty of attention from other from other researchers,
Speaker 1: and Thompson reports that there are also neuroplasticity induction trials
Speaker 1: with drugs like dnepazil, which is used to treat Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: or the common antidepressant prozac. So you know, of course,
Speaker 1: you see a lot of hype in the headlines like
Speaker 1: you know, learn like a child again, rewire your brain
Speaker 1: to be a super learner. But despite these early, kind
Speaker 1: of promising seeming trials, we should remember to slow down.
Speaker 1: Even if we didn't know anything except the fact that
Speaker 1: our bodies were created by natural selection, we could conclude
Speaker 1: that the brain shuts down its hyperplastic period for a reason.
Speaker 1: Do we really want to go messing around with the
Speaker 1: stability of our brain without a good reason behind it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of just trying to solve the lament configuration
Speaker 1: here without any real understanding of what is going to happen.
Speaker 1: So let's take another quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will briefly discuss some of the potential downsides of neuroplasticity,
Speaker 1: the pros and cons than. All right, we're back, so
Speaker 1: we we we discussed the idea that neuroplasticity could have
Speaker 1: not just pros but also cons If you extend neuro
Speaker 1: plasticity into adulthood, that's not necessarily a perfectly good thing
Speaker 1: right now, now, certainly that the potential pros are really
Speaker 1: attractive because we could invoke brief widenings of neuroplasticity to
Speaker 1: aid in recovery from various illnesses and injuries. We could
Speaker 1: treat neurological diseases and fight the effects of Alzheimer's, we
Speaker 1: could also use it to treat trauma. One of the
Speaker 1: things I think about is that in his presentation at
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival, at the beginning of this panel,
Speaker 1: the con talks about how hard it is to retrain
Speaker 1: people to walk after they've had some kind of like
Speaker 1: stroke or brain injury that damages their motor areas. They
Speaker 1: forget how to walk and they need to learn how
Speaker 1: to walk again. It's really hard for an adult to
Speaker 1: learn how to walk, even if your brain is you know,
Speaker 1: you're in a healing phase, because walking is difficult. It's
Speaker 1: like a super hard thing to learn how to do.
Speaker 1: You're doing all this intuitive math all the time, to
Speaker 1: keep your balance, to do everything right. It's not easy,
Speaker 1: but we learn it during this period when our brains
Speaker 1: are in this super learning phase as children. So if
Speaker 1: if you could say, have somebody with a brain injury
Speaker 1: they need to relearn how to walk, and you could
Speaker 1: reinduce that kind of childhood motor learning neuro plasticity, then
Speaker 1: they could potentially have a lot more success and have
Speaker 1: an easier time getting back on their feet and relearning
Speaker 1: these kinds of tasks that we take for granted, but
Speaker 1: of course, the potential for misuse and even abuse is
Speaker 1: obviously high. Here neuro plasticity has already become as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: something of a buzzword in the realm of supplements and
Speaker 1: self help, and we focus again on this nero definition
Speaker 1: of neuroplasticity most of the time, the idea that neuroplasticity
Speaker 1: equals good and assume that any sort of boost here
Speaker 1: is a good thing. But indeed, what would the downsides
Speaker 1: to even therapeutic use be if someone were to take
Speaker 1: such a drug unregulated to aid and study perhaps or
Speaker 1: or to work on some purely for some purely recreational purpose.
Speaker 1: You know, what would be the cost? We again, we
Speaker 1: don't know for certain, but but there are some possibilities
Speaker 1: and some of these were discussed in that World Science
Speaker 1: Festival panel. What did they talk about, Well, they said, Uh,
Speaker 1: for one thing, there is this potential link between too
Speaker 1: much plasticity and say, savant abilities. Uh. Savant syndrome is
Speaker 1: when individuals with mental disabilities exhibit advanced abilities and specific
Speaker 1: areas such as recall, calculation or musical skill. So under
Speaker 1: under their characterizations, savant syndrome could be sort of a
Speaker 1: byproduct of of unregulated plasticity in the brain. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: at the very least, it's a situation where if you're saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: give me all the plasticity you got, what could go wrong?
Speaker 1: And they're saying, well, uh, here here is something. Here's
Speaker 1: an an example of a case where they may be
Speaker 1: linked to too much plasticity. Yeah. They also say that
Speaker 1: too much plasticity may yield too much to the environment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: How about um, when children are young, they're emotionally vulnerable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it makes me again, think of that v for
Speaker 1: Vendetta example of a character essentially, you know, tormenting himself
Speaker 1: by by taking a psychedelic at a at a place
Speaker 1: of intense historic trauma. Yeah. Now, I can definitely see
Speaker 1: ways that if you were to say, make my brain
Speaker 1: sort of a vessel, make it, make it play. Though
Speaker 1: we can shape it, however, we want the first really
Speaker 1: bad thing to happen to you while you're in that
Speaker 1: state could have really traumatic effects. Yeah. Indeed, I mean
Speaker 1: ultimately it can make for a more chaotic system of
Speaker 1: the mind. Uh, in a time, during a time in
Speaker 1: which you're not supposed to have that much chaos. Also,
Speaker 1: they point out that autism may be a situation that
Speaker 1: entails too much neuroplasticity. It's been pointed out that transcranial
Speaker 1: magnetics stimulation looks it works longer on autistic individuals, so
Speaker 1: there is stronger perturbation there. And transcranial magnetic stimulation that
Speaker 1: just be where you put like a magnetic coil over
Speaker 1: the head to induce current in the brain, and that
Speaker 1: sort of stimulates certain brain areas or or actually I
Speaker 1: think often suppresses or sort of like shuts down certain
Speaker 1: brain areas. But they're saying that in certain uh, in
Speaker 1: certain cases, it appears that some individuals with some types
Speaker 1: of autism are more susceptible to the brain being manipulated
Speaker 1: by that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. And then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, they say that schizophrenia may, according to
Speaker 1: some recent studies, be tied to synaptic pruning again the
Speaker 1: process by which the brain sheds wheat connections between neurons.
Speaker 1: In other words, that it might be more associated with
Speaker 1: the brain sort of being the opposite of two neuroplastic
Speaker 1: to neurostable. Yeah. Yeah, again, just showing that there is
Speaker 1: a balance in the There seems to be a balance
Speaker 1: in the brain, and we really need to know what
Speaker 1: we're doing before we just erupt it, even for very
Speaker 1: noble purposes and very targeted purposes um point. For instance,
Speaker 1: during adolescence and even early adulthood, we see this in
Speaker 1: the pre frontal cortex, the center of you know, thinking
Speaker 1: and planning skills. People with genes that accelerate or at
Speaker 1: intensify pruning are at higher risk for schizophrenia, according to
Speaker 1: a two thousand sixteen Columbia University study published in Nature.
Speaker 1: And then it's worth driving home too that this would
Speaker 1: in no way be a magic pill. This would not
Speaker 1: be like some some movie pill where you just take
Speaker 1: it and oh, I'm suddenly, uh, you know, a complete genius.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I'm a master of every art I attempt to
Speaker 1: take up. Well, yeah, I mean, we should keep in
Speaker 1: mind we don't want to overstate the effects too much,
Speaker 1: are over generalized too much. But with the caveat that
Speaker 1: this is just a metaphor, you should be careful about
Speaker 1: anything that makes your mind more like the mind of
Speaker 1: a child. Yeah, that makes your mind more like I mean,
Speaker 1: there are great things about being a child, but there
Speaker 1: are also ways in which being a child is a
Speaker 1: position of vulnerability. There's a reason we protect children, and
Speaker 1: who's going to protect you if you're you know, if
Speaker 1: you're taking a whole bunch of illegally obtained neuroplasticity pills.
Speaker 1: Like there's there's not a direct comparison to be made
Speaker 1: here between say potential neuroplasticity drug abuse and say steroid abuse.
Speaker 1: But but but I think you can you can draw
Speaker 1: some very rough comparisons. You know, an individual who who
Speaker 1: takes too much of this substance in order to artificially
Speaker 1: bulk up muscles in an inn what is ultimately an
Speaker 1: unhelpful way, you know, like muscles that are too big
Speaker 1: to really function for what you you need them for,
Speaker 1: and then that occurring with with various side effects as well,
Speaker 1: both mental and physical. So I feel like we we
Speaker 1: we risk similar situations, certainly if we're talking about any
Speaker 1: future abuse of these or even just recreational use of
Speaker 1: neuro plasticity drugs, as is often the case with with
Speaker 1: great possibility for rewards comes great possibility for risks. So
Speaker 1: this is this is something where you should keep an
Speaker 1: eye on it. This is a field that could have
Speaker 1: great promise for really helping people's lives. But but you know,
Speaker 1: be careful, don't buy into the hype, and definitely don't
Speaker 1: buy anything somebody selling. Yeah, yeah, be care because there,
Speaker 1: as was pointed out there, there are already products in
Speaker 1: the market that are using the neuro plasticity buzzword to
Speaker 1: to to reach you. Uh. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, well, Robert, Joe, I'm getting a little
Speaker 1: older and I want to I want to stay sharp.
Speaker 1: I wanna I want to do what I can to
Speaker 1: to keep those those doors a little bit wide. I
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to go into neural stagnation.
Speaker 1: What can I do? Well, there are safe things that
Speaker 1: we do know about. In fact, there is one of
Speaker 1: them is sleep, getting plenty of sleep, exercise and nutrition. Uh.
Speaker 1: Using your brain, like stimulation of the brain, both intellectually
Speaker 1: and socially. Yeah. Uh. And and you know your you
Speaker 1: might think, well, these don't sound very fun, but I
Speaker 1: hate stimulating. It's like you like keep telling us to
Speaker 1: take our vitamins. But in a way, it's like that.
Speaker 1: It's like we're not talking about magic fixes here, but
Speaker 1: we're talking about things that that that have done regularly
Speaker 1: over the course of a lifetime, have been shown to
Speaker 1: have positive effects. Why can't I just have a pill?
Speaker 1: I know that's that's what we really want. But but
Speaker 1: I do think when you when you look at it,
Speaker 1: like more often than not, it certainly with more complex
Speaker 1: things related to human physiology and and and certainly the mind,
Speaker 1: the quick fixes is not necessarily what we think it is. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I want to come back on what I just said there.
Speaker 1: I am certainly not somebody who wants to demonize medication
Speaker 1: of any kind, demonized psychiatric medication or or you know,
Speaker 1: neurological medication. I that's a thing you sometimes hear people
Speaker 1: do you know, like, oh, why don't you just you know,
Speaker 1: you need a pill for that? Why don't you just
Speaker 1: whip your life into shape? That That is a fatally
Speaker 1: reductionist statitude that does not properly understand the way that
Speaker 1: our bodies and behaviors are controlled by chemicals in the brain. Yes,
Speaker 1: and certainly all the various differences from brain to brain.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so, uh so I'm very much in the
Speaker 1: same same boat. I think that the future for neuro
Speaker 1: plasticity is bright. There there is a lot of good
Speaker 1: that is going to come of these future treatments and medications.
Speaker 1: But it does benefit us to to understand uh, what
Speaker 1: we're actually talking about and the the the both negative
Speaker 1: and positive potential of the technology. Yeah, so hold hold
Speaker 1: the hype, listen to the researchers, all right. So there
Speaker 1: you have it. Uh. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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