Speaker 1: Why do brains need friends, Why do human brains in
Speaker 1: particular need social interaction, and how does that interaction affect
Speaker 1: the brain? Our AI chatbots enough to scratch the social itch?
Speaker 2: Why or why not?
Speaker 1: And what do we love so much about real human
Speaker 1: touch in person interaction, and for that matter, why do
Speaker 1: we love dogs? From empathy and introversion, to social media
Speaker 1: to isolation and what to do about it? We've got
Speaker 1: it all this week with guest Ben Rain. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Intercosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author
Speaker 1: at Stanford, and in these episodes we seek to understand
Speaker 1: why and how our lives look the way they do.
Speaker 1: Let's start with an experiment. In nineteen fifty eight, the
Speaker 1: psychologist Harry Harlowe placed newborn monkeys in separate cages.
Speaker 2: They were fed and kept warm.
Speaker 1: And safe, but instead of a mother, each baby was
Speaker 1: given a simple wire frame to cling to. The result
Speaker 1: was heartbreaking. Even with food and shelter, the monkeys grew
Speaker 1: anxious and withdrawn and sickly. They rocked themselves for comfort.
Speaker 2: Many of them refused to eat.
Speaker 1: It was a heartbreaking experiment, and what it surfaced is
Speaker 1: even more evidence of something we probably already into it,
Speaker 1: which is that food and protection isn't sufficient for survival
Speaker 1: for a social brain like.
Speaker 2: That of primates. We need connection.
Speaker 1: Now, we often picture the brain as a demanded center
Speaker 1: running the body from inside its sealed chamber. It's like
Speaker 1: a solitary captain at the helm. But the right way
Speaker 1: to think about it is that brains are like instruments
Speaker 1: in a symphony. We're all evolved to play in harmony
Speaker 1: with others. In fact, there's a whole field now of
Speaker 1: neuroscience known as social neuroscience, which examines all the circuitry
Speaker 1: involved with representing other people representing each other. So every
Speaker 1: shared smile, every moment of eye contact, every active empathy,
Speaker 1: these are all massively important to the functioning of the
Speaker 1: nervous system from the very start of life. Connection is
Speaker 1: a sort of biological fuel. Babies who are held and
Speaker 1: comforted develop more resilient neural networks. Adults with deep and
Speaker 1: trusting relationships they live longer, they heal faster, they handle
Speaker 1: stress more effectively, and studies generally show that chronic loneliness
Speaker 1: is as harmful to health as smoking in terms of
Speaker 1: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, anxiety, and so on.
Speaker 2: So we are built to connect.
Speaker 1: Yet here we are in an age of unprecedented connection digitally,
Speaker 1: and at the same time we have unprecedented social isolation.
Speaker 1: Unlike all humans who came before us. We text instead
Speaker 1: of talk, we scroll instead of strolling with a friend.
Speaker 1: We're all surrounded by people online, yet many people feel
Speaker 1: completely alone. So we've been living in a massive technocultural shift.
Speaker 1: But in today's context, the thing I want to emphasize
Speaker 1: is the importance of this from the point of view
Speaker 1: of the brain. We can see the effects of loneliness
Speaker 1: in brain scans. We can measure this in stress hormones,
Speaker 1: we can trace it in the immune system. Now, why
Speaker 1: does the brain crave connection so strongly? Why does it
Speaker 1: reward us for being together and punish us for isolation.
Speaker 1: What role does empathy play in keeping us healthy? And
Speaker 1: how do our relationships with our friends or partners, or
Speaker 1: children or even dogs. How does this modify the architecture
Speaker 1: of the brain. These are the questions that my guest today,
Speaker 1: neuroscientist Ben Rain, dives into in his new book Why
Speaker 1: Brains Need Friends, which comes out this week. The book
Speaker 1: is an important reminder that our minds are not soloists,
Speaker 1: but symphony players, and that thriving in a post interaction
Speaker 1: world means relearning how to live and connect like this
Speaker 1: social creatures that we are. As a side note, Ben
Speaker 1: and I teach a class together at Stanford called how
Speaker 1: to Communicate Science, in which we talk about books and
Speaker 1: videos and podcasts and television and social media. And Ben
Speaker 1: is excellent at breaking down the science and representing it
Speaker 1: accurately and concisely. So it's a pleasure to welcome my
Speaker 1: colleague Ben to the podcast today. Before we get started
Speaker 1: about the neuroscience of social brains, the thing I want
Speaker 1: to ask you is you describe in the book that
Speaker 1: we live in a post interaction world.
Speaker 2: So what do you mean by that? First off, excited
Speaker 2: to be here, This is awesome, good to see you.
Speaker 3: The post interaction world, as I refer to it, is
Speaker 3: basically describing that we are becoming less and less social.
Speaker 2: We are spending less time together interacting.
Speaker 3: I mean, the fact that we are virtual right now
Speaker 3: is sort of a testament to that. But just a
Speaker 3: variety of changes have led us down this path of
Speaker 3: being less connected, and it kind of, you know, you
Speaker 3: could point to a number of scapegoats. The COVID nineteen
Speaker 3: pandemic was a huge one, and I actually think that
Speaker 3: extended period of isolation sort of reset or shifted our
Speaker 3: expectations for social interaction, because going in, you know, in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, we all had a social life. We all
Speaker 3: saw our friends let's say, once twice, three times a week.
Speaker 3: Then that was just completely demolished, just gone. So during
Speaker 3: those subsequent few years where we had less interactions, our
Speaker 3: expectations shifted our brain. Our brains are prediction machines, and
Speaker 3: so we spent all this time in isolation, and so
Speaker 3: we started to not expect to see our friends once
Speaker 3: or twice or three times a week, which, by the way,
Speaker 3: the fact that we weren't seeing them was upbending our expectations,
Speaker 3: which is why it was so disturbing in the beginning.
Speaker 3: But then maybe gradually we got kind of used to it.
Speaker 3: We reset our lives a bit, and now life is restored.
Speaker 3: COVID's over. We're back out in the normal world interacting
Speaker 3: as we used to. But our brains have shifted from
Speaker 3: expecting one, two or three interactions a week to maybe
Speaker 3: expecting one interaction every two weeks or once a month,
Speaker 3: and so that's a big part of this post interaction
Speaker 3: world I refer to, and I think that's very bad
Speaker 3: because shifted expectations don't mean shifted needs. You know, just
Speaker 3: like sleep or nutrition, socializing is a really core pillar
Speaker 3: of what drives the brain and what supports our health.
Speaker 3: And you know, while we may not expect to interact
Speaker 3: three times a week, most of us would be better
Speaker 3: for it. So, you know, but on top of COVID
Speaker 3: is also.
Speaker 2: You know, remote work.
Speaker 3: Many of these societal shifts that happened because of COVID,
Speaker 3: you know, people got used to working from home. We
Speaker 3: had the rise of things like instacart, where you could
Speaker 3: pick up your groceries instead of actually going in the
Speaker 3: store yourself and talking to the cashier and whatnot. And
Speaker 3: there's just this automation of essentially everything you could do.
Speaker 3: You know, there's telemedicine, you can tour a house, you
Speaker 3: can you know, instead of having to go to the bank,
Speaker 3: you could do it online. Everything that used to involve
Speaker 3: a human generally doesn't nowadays. And so it's important for
Speaker 3: us to recognize the value of interaction in this post
Speaker 3: interaction world.
Speaker 1: So from a neuroscience point, of view, why do we
Speaker 1: need interaction?
Speaker 3: So I'm going to start with the evolutionary perspective. If
Speaker 3: you think back hundreds of thousands or millions of years, humans,
Speaker 3: like many animals on Earth, survive best in groups.
Speaker 2: We are really.
Speaker 3: Good at hunting and defending ourselves when we're together. And
Speaker 3: part of the reasons for that is we have all
Speaker 3: these features in our bodies that allow us to work
Speaker 3: so well together, like our eyebrows, which we can emote expressions,
Speaker 3: and the white part of our eye, the sclera, which
Speaker 3: allows us to tell where other people are looking.
Speaker 2: And of course that's super helpful.
Speaker 3: You can basically read someone's mind and infer what they're
Speaker 3: thinking by recognizing the direction of their eyes. By the way,
Speaker 3: that's not standard across the animal kingdom. Humans are one
Speaker 3: of the only species that have whites Clara. Anyhow, all
Speaker 3: that to say, since we survive better in groups, our
Speaker 3: brains are built in a way that reward us for
Speaker 3: social interaction, because how would you get a species to
Speaker 3: stick together, Well, you can get them to stick together
Speaker 3: if being around each other is pleasant and rewarding. So,
Speaker 3: like all social species, and by that I mean any
Speaker 3: animals that existing, we have social reward systems in our brain,
Speaker 3: where being around others drives the release and the activation
Speaker 3: of brain systems that are basically rewarding and reinforcing, so
Speaker 3: that we want to be around others more frequently. It's
Speaker 3: by reinforcing, you know, in the psychological sense, when something
Speaker 3: is pleasant or nutritional, food is very good for you,
Speaker 3: or provides a lot of nutrients, a lot of sugars
Speaker 3: like chocolate, it drives the release of things like dopamine,
Speaker 3: which keeps us coming back. That's reinforcing, and socializing drives
Speaker 3: the release of dopamine and other rewarding neurotransmitters just the same.
Speaker 1: So beyond the reward system, what's going on with social
Speaker 1: interaction in the brain.
Speaker 3: Yes, so there's two main things. Number one, socializing is
Speaker 3: just supportive for brain health. And if you think about
Speaker 3: the brain like a muscle, that the more you exercise it,
Speaker 3: the more it grows and strengthens. Socializing is really great
Speaker 3: exercise for the brain. It's not a simple task to
Speaker 3: take on. You have to read the body language to
Speaker 3: enter for these statements and think for your responses, and
Speaker 3: you know, coordinate your own movements and everything while interpreting
Speaker 3: their behavior. It's really not easy, and so it's good
Speaker 3: exercise for the brain, and it may lead to the
Speaker 3: development of new synapses and the strengthening of existing synapses,
Speaker 3: which is sort of the way that the brain exercises
Speaker 3: and strengthens. And potentially, as a consequence of this, people
Speaker 3: who live more social lives and who engage with others
Speaker 3: more literally have larger brains. They have more gray matter,
Speaker 3: and that's a great selling point for a person like
Speaker 3: me who wants to encourage others to connect more. But
Speaker 3: it also has real consequences, not in that like you
Speaker 3: immediately become smarter because you have a bigger brain, but
Speaker 3: as we age, having this added gray matter can serve
Speaker 3: as this cognitive reserve, which can make us more resilient
Speaker 3: through aging and less vulnerable to dementia.
Speaker 2: Quick interjection.
Speaker 1: Cognitive reserve is this concept that as your brain, let's say,
Speaker 1: degenerates with age, you've got all this backup material. You
Speaker 1: have sort of a larger hard drive that you can
Speaker 1: depend on on cognitive reserve.
Speaker 3: That the way that I like to describe it, or
Speaker 3: the way that I refer to it in the book
Speaker 3: is you think about a battalion of ten thousand troops
Speaker 3: going into a battle and losing one hundred troops, well,
Speaker 3: going into the next battle, they'll be still quite strong
Speaker 3: and powerful. But if it's a battalion of five hundred
Speaker 3: troops and they lose one hundred, it's a big difference.
Speaker 3: And so having this cognitive reserve, all this build up
Speaker 3: extra brain tissue, will make you more resilient as that
Speaker 3: brain tissue gradually declines and atrophies as we age, which
Speaker 3: happens to everybody unfortunately exactly.
Speaker 1: And by the way, what's interesting is that brain plasticity
Speaker 1: is such an important part of this because you can
Speaker 1: essentially build cognitive reserve by constantly challenging yourself with novelty,
Speaker 1: with things that are tough, and that builds new roadways
Speaker 1: and bridges, so that even as some things are dropping
Speaker 1: out with time, you're building new ones. The interesting part
Speaker 1: here is that the expression is that nothing is as
Speaker 1: difficult for the brain as other people, which is to say,
Speaker 1: other people provide really good fuel for your brain to
Speaker 1: rewire and so on.
Speaker 3: Why is that, Well, like I said, it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's challenging. Socializing is not easy. It comes easier for
Speaker 3: some people than others, but it really involves a lot
Speaker 3: of executive control.
Speaker 2: You have to really be tuned in.
Speaker 3: And actually, on that note, there's a really interesting study
Speaker 3: where they basically did a social intervention in older people
Speaker 3: I believe they were folks living in retirement homes sixty
Speaker 3: five plus age group, and what they found was that
Speaker 3: when they socialized more, they did brain scans and they
Speaker 3: found that there was an increased activity in this salience network,
Speaker 3: which is a cluster of brain areas that work together
Speaker 3: to basically pay attention to the outer world. And it
Speaker 3: makes perfect sense because if you're sitting and you're watching TV,
Speaker 3: do you think that salience network is really coming online?
Speaker 2: You're paying attention a little bit, but it's not engaging
Speaker 2: you in the way that.
Speaker 3: Really the outcome of your behaviors has a consequence. And
Speaker 3: when you're engaging with someone else, you really have to
Speaker 3: tune in because you might embarrass yourself, you might insult them.
Speaker 2: There's a lot more at risk.
Speaker 3: And again, evolutionarily, social interactions are really important. You know,
Speaker 3: if we are not liked, if we are cast out
Speaker 3: from our tribe, it can have very serious consequences. You know,
Speaker 3: a million years ago, those consequences may be death, you're
Speaker 3: easy prey, you're hunted alone.
Speaker 1: So let's turn to isolation. What happens with isolation.
Speaker 2: In the brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so isolation is effectively processed in the brain as stress.
Speaker 3: There there's more to it than this, of course, but
Speaker 3: we do not like being alone. This also may have
Speaker 3: evolutionary roots, because, like I just said, if you're cast
Speaker 3: out from your tribe, the brain would be wise to
Speaker 3: have a built in system that basically makes you uncomfortable
Speaker 3: until you find community again for the sake of your survival.
Speaker 3: But when we are stressed, there's a stress is not
Speaker 3: good for you. And studies have shown that when people
Speaker 3: are exposed to isolation, like if you know controlled environments,
Speaker 3: person goes into a NASA space station by themselves, they
Speaker 3: know what they're doing thirty days, but during the thirty days,
Speaker 3: their cortisol levels will progressively rise and they will remain elevated.
Speaker 3: Cortisol being this stress hormone. It's glucocorticoid, meaning it drives
Speaker 3: a stress response in the body. And then once they
Speaker 3: exit and return to normal life and socialize again, their
Speaker 3: cortisol levels will return to normal. Now, the thing is
Speaker 3: cortisol in driving the stress response one of the things
Speaker 3: that it does is it reduces inflammation. Because when we're stressed,
Speaker 3: when we're being challenged by something like a Saber two
Speaker 3: tiger coming after us, it would be helpful if we
Speaker 3: didn't have inflammation in our bodies.
Speaker 2: We need to be ready to fight, ready to take.
Speaker 3: On the challenge. But with chronic stress, when cortisol levels
Speaker 3: remain elevated for a long time, that anti inflammatory property
Speaker 3: basically fades away because the tissues cannot always remain in
Speaker 3: this anti inflammatory state. Eventually they become desensitized to the cortisol.
Speaker 2: Just like you know, if you're stressed.
Speaker 3: For a long time, you can't remain in fight or
Speaker 3: flight hyper vigilant for weeks, right, Eventually you just kind
Speaker 3: of you desensitize to that.
Speaker 2: So the reason that's bad.
Speaker 3: Is because it means the cortisol's ability to reduce inflammation diminishes,
Speaker 3: which means that it can lead to chronic inflammation in
Speaker 3: chronic stress. With social isolation being a form of stress,
Speaker 3: being chronically isolated can lead to effectively chronic inflammation and
Speaker 3: basically a long term stress response.
Speaker 2: And that's really bad.
Speaker 3: And the evidence for why that's so bad comes from
Speaker 3: studies tracking people who are isolated. When you have chronic inflammation,
Speaker 3: it interferes with the function of your tissues, and soeople
Speaker 3: who are isolated for extended periods they're at higher risk
Speaker 3: of dementia, heart disease, diabetes, and of course on the
Speaker 3: mood side, depression and anxiety, suicidality.
Speaker 2: It's really impactful.
Speaker 3: And so I think that especially given what I mentioned
Speaker 3: about this post interaction world, and of course it's not
Speaker 3: that nobody's interacting anymore, but we are objectively most of
Speaker 3: us interacting less. And the thing about loneliness and isolation
Speaker 3: is that it's not a binary thing where it's like
Speaker 3: I'm lonely and isolated or I am socialized. It's really
Speaker 3: a continuum where you can have one interaction a month
Speaker 3: or you can have five interactions a month. The person
Speaker 3: having one interaction a month is objectively more isolated than
Speaker 3: the person having five a month. And so given that
Speaker 3: we've shifted in the way that we interact with one
Speaker 3: another and engage with the world in general, I worry
Speaker 3: that we may be leading ourselves into unecess story health
Speaker 3: complications and anxiety and depression because of this stress response
Speaker 3: that isolation induces.
Speaker 1: So when people are socializing, their salience network is on.
Speaker 1: It leads to a stronger brain. When people are isolated
Speaker 1: leads to these stress responses.
Speaker 2: What is your opinion about these.
Speaker 1: Three D avatar chat bots that you can have friendships
Speaker 1: or relationships with. This is taking over the world at
Speaker 1: a very fast paced There are apparently a billion people
Speaker 1: now with AI relationships.
Speaker 2: What's your take on that.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I
Speaker 3: haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm like, this
Speaker 3: is my firm stance. But in general, there's something special
Speaker 3: about human to human interaction. And there's many examples of this.
Speaker 3: I mean, for one, if you think about like video gamers,
Speaker 3: they could play against the route with the bot or
Speaker 3: the computer people call it right, But instead people will
Speaker 3: pay a monthly subscription to play against other humans even
Speaker 3: though they're not interacting with them.
Speaker 2: There's something special about that.
Speaker 3: And there are studies that show where when people go
Speaker 3: on websites that have like an AI chatbot that can
Speaker 3: help you or a real human avatar, people are more
Speaker 3: likely to recommend the website.
Speaker 2: To others when there's a human involved.
Speaker 3: There's just something valuable about that, and there are areas
Speaker 3: of the brain in the context of social touch that
Speaker 3: seem to be especially activated by human touch, and one
Speaker 3: of those is called the posterior superior temporal sulcus.
Speaker 2: And it's activated by touch.
Speaker 3: And when people are touched by a robot, which sounds
Speaker 3: kind of wild and freakish, but massage by a robot,
Speaker 3: I should say, a foot massage from a robot. And
Speaker 3: so this suggests that the brain has some ability to
Speaker 3: distinguish the social nature of touch, which makes sense, right, Like,
Speaker 3: right now I'm rubbing my feet on the carpet. My
Speaker 3: brain is telling me, well, you know, there's no reason
Speaker 3: to release oxytocin and bond with this carpet. It's a carpet,
Speaker 3: it's not your wife, right. There's these areas of the
Speaker 3: brain that manage this distinction. And I think when we're
Speaker 3: having these chat interactions with these AI large language models,
Speaker 3: I would imagine that for most people, the brain is
Speaker 3: making that distinction, which may or may not be making
Speaker 3: it less valuable, making it less exciting. But I do
Speaker 3: think that we hold the keys to that barrier.
Speaker 2: I think because.
Speaker 3: There are studies where people have shown that basically people
Speaker 3: who use AI chatbots more and have relationships with them,
Speaker 3: believe that it's good for their health, whereas people who
Speaker 3: don't think it's bad for us. And I'm one of
Speaker 3: the people who I think it's bad for us because
Speaker 3: I don't hear the AI chatbots as friends. And so
Speaker 3: I think we do have this ability to make that
Speaker 3: leap hurtle over that barrier and convince ourselves, yeah, this
Speaker 3: chatbot cares about me. It's human like, it matters. What
Speaker 3: it says matters. But I think that it would be
Speaker 3: very I don't want to say dangerous. Maybe that's a
Speaker 3: strong word, but it would be a bad idea for
Speaker 3: us to allow ourselves to get there. Right now, we
Speaker 3: are the very first generation of humans having these human
Speaker 3: like interactions with these AI chatbots, and I think that
Speaker 3: the way we behave and the way we treat them
Speaker 3: will determine how our children, our grandchildren treat them, and
Speaker 3: whether our grandchildren will maybe go into AI therapists instead
Speaker 3: of human therapists because we may or may not accept them.
Speaker 1: I will say I do think there's a great advantage
Speaker 1: to AI therapists in the sense that they're available twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. And remember everything you've said, and they
Speaker 1: never get distracted and they're just you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's going to change the world and change suicide rates
Speaker 1: to have things like AI therapists. But as far as
Speaker 1: AI friends go this two things I want to mention.
Speaker 1: One is they're getting better fast, and so they are
Speaker 1: more and more like a person.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Grock released these three d avatars which are incredibly engaging
Speaker 1: and so on. The reason I think this won't scratch
Speaker 1: the itch totally is because in the end, you want
Speaker 1: to take your wife or girlfriend or you know, someone
Speaker 1: takes their boyfriend or their husband out to dinner with
Speaker 1: other people and wants to do the foot massage and
Speaker 1: wants to look at the stars with them and all
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. So I think fundamentally there's going
Speaker 1: to be this unfilled part and that's that's you know,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, is like what is it that
Speaker 1: humans fulfill here. The second thing is I'm interested in
Speaker 1: us getting back together in a year from now to
Speaker 1: see where this has evolved to and to see whether
Speaker 1: the chatbots get so good that they can actually activate
Speaker 1: the same brain networks as you have another person.
Speaker 3: And what they found was that this brain area it
Speaker 3: was more active when people were receiving the massage from
Speaker 3: a human than a robot.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now let's return to the realm of humans entirely.
Speaker 1: So tell us why social interaction is so important in childhood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, as we grow up, we of course are
Speaker 3: exposed to a bunch of interactions that probably many of
Speaker 3: us don't remember, but those interactions through our early life
Speaker 3: I play a critical role in shaping the development of
Speaker 3: certain brain areas. So there is a just like there's
Speaker 3: a sensitive period for a language where you know, we've
Speaker 3: all seen a child pick up a language like this,
Speaker 3: and then we try to learn a language as an
Speaker 3: adult and it's just impossible, there's a sensitive period for
Speaker 3: social interaction as well. And during this period, in the
Speaker 3: first couple of years of life, we are exceptionally sensitive
Speaker 3: to learning social information, so we can begin to understand
Speaker 3: effectively the rules of social conduct. You know, I shouldn't
Speaker 3: cut in line, I shouldn't push Johnny down the slide
Speaker 3: during recess. You know, I should share my candy that
Speaker 3: I got from Halloween because it earns me social credit.
Speaker 3: These types of things where we're learning and building these
Speaker 3: social models of the world and there's some evidence to
Speaker 3: suggest that this socializing may help shape and develop the
Speaker 3: prefrontal cortex, of course, a critical brain area involved in
Speaker 3: planning and executive decision making, all sorts of things that
Speaker 3: are really important for everyday life, but also social functioning.
Speaker 3: And the evidence for this comes in two forms. One,
Speaker 3: children who experience less social interaction in early life show
Speaker 3: actually a smaller volume of the prefrontal cortex, and that's
Speaker 3: about as detailed as we can look at a human brain,
Speaker 3: just kind of looking at volumes and functions, But in
Speaker 3: mice we can look much more deeply at this micro structures,
Speaker 3: these synapses, the interactions between neurons, and research in mice
Speaker 3: has found that when mice are isolated in early life,
Speaker 3: they literally show basically immature synapses and the preferal cortex.
Speaker 3: The are the dendrites where the neurons receive neurotransmitter signals.
Speaker 3: They are not as mature in the way they are formed,
Speaker 3: which means that these neurons are basically not able to
Speaker 3: signal quite as well to each other. And what's especially
Speaker 3: interesting as well is that when the mice were isolated
Speaker 3: at a later period, just a few weeks later, they
Speaker 3: showed no such changes. So there's, like I said, this
Speaker 3: sensitive period in early life where the shaping occurs. And
Speaker 3: of course, you know, there's examples like Genie, the girl
Speaker 3: Susan Wilie I believes her full name who She was
Speaker 3: born in California and horrifically held in captivity and isolation
Speaker 3: for the first thirteen years.
Speaker 2: Of her life by her parents, by her parents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when she was discovered by California authorities and
Speaker 3: released and entered the world and to have a normal life,
Speaker 3: she was basically never able to fully form social skills.
Speaker 2: Window had passed.
Speaker 3: And so without that critical shaping, you know, we don't
Speaker 3: end up as the same adult that we would be otherwise.
Speaker 1: I wrote about several cases of these feral children, as
Speaker 1: they're called in my book Live Wired. This sort of
Speaker 1: thing tragically happens once in a while. Yeah, a child
Speaker 1: is so neglected, so deeply neglected, they're locked in a
Speaker 1: room by themselves, they have to sleep in their closet,
Speaker 1: tied up in a sleeping bag.
Speaker 2: I mean, just this bizarre stuff.
Speaker 1: Because of mentally ill parents, they never developed language, they
Speaker 1: don't develop the ability to use a toilet correctly. They
Speaker 1: sometimes have what's called psychosocial dwarfism, where they don't actually
Speaker 1: even grow to the normal height, to the expected height. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's all kinds of deeply embedded problems with the
Speaker 1: development of their brain as a result. And you're exactly right,
Speaker 1: socializing is one of these. Okay, So let's switch gears.
Speaker 1: Tell us about the difference between introverts and extroverts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So extraversion is something that can be measu
Speaker 3: quite well. In fact, one of your recent guests, Jordan Peterson,
Speaker 3: has a scale on this that I modified slightly and
Speaker 3: included in the book, and it's a trade extraversion is
Speaker 3: what I'm referring to. And you know, for listeners, you
Speaker 3: can go online and see if there's a freely accessible
Speaker 3: trade extroversion scale and sort of figure out where you land.
Speaker 3: And generally, the higher your score, the more extroverted you are,
Speaker 3: the more likely you are to enjoy socializing to get
Speaker 3: energy from interaction, and the lower you score, the more
Speaker 3: introverted you are, the less likely you are. However, I
Speaker 3: think a common misconception is that introverts basically don't like
Speaker 3: interacting at all, and that they would rather if it
Speaker 3: was an option to just stay home all the time
Speaker 3: and never interact with another human ever, that would be
Speaker 3: their preference. But what's interesting is that the psychological studies
Speaker 3: on this, people are thrown into these environments and said
Speaker 3: act like an extrovert, regardless of whether people are an
Speaker 3: introvert or an extrovert. If they do this for just
Speaker 3: one interaction, like a ten minute conversation or a little
Speaker 3: bit longer, they will feel better after. They will show
Speaker 3: mood increases, even if they are very introverted. However, if
Speaker 3: those same researchers say act like an extrovert for a
Speaker 3: whole week, then by the end of that week, those
Speaker 3: introverted people, those who score lower on trade extraversion, they
Speaker 3: are miserable. It's basically a week of torture. It's completely draining,
Speaker 3: you know. And the extroverts, on the other hand, they
Speaker 3: feel great after that week. Now, you know, I think,
Speaker 3: regardless of how extroverted you are, there is always, you know,
Speaker 3: a limit to this, and I score very high and
Speaker 3: those I'm very extroverted. But if I go on vacation
Speaker 3: for a week with my family, like put me in
Speaker 3: a you know, isolation room for at least another week
Speaker 3: after that, I need to be by myself. And I
Speaker 3: think what's important for everyone, regardless of where you stand
Speaker 3: on that continuum, is to work to recognize that sort
Speaker 3: of fine line where you cross over. And like I said,
Speaker 3: everyone will be a little different.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: For some people, socializing once a week going to one
Speaker 3: dinner is plenty. You know, by the end of that dinner,
Speaker 3: they're like, Okay, I'm good.
Speaker 2: I don't need to see anyone for a week.
Speaker 3: For others, that may be just the start of it,
Speaker 3: and they may need to see friends another two or
Speaker 3: three times for the the end of the week to
Speaker 3: feel good. And so I think that identifying your trade
Speaker 3: extraversion is actually a really useful tool, which is why
Speaker 3: I include the scale in my books that people can
Speaker 3: fill it out and you know, literally right on the
Speaker 3: pages if you want to and figure out exactly where
Speaker 3: you stand.
Speaker 1: So let's talk empathy for a moment. So what is
Speaker 1: empathy from the brain's point of view.
Speaker 3: Yeah, empathy is the ability to either understand what someone
Speaker 3: else is going through or to actually share their emotions.
Speaker 3: And you know a clear example of this. I hate
Speaker 3: to do this to people, but I'm going to do
Speaker 3: it to you right now. So imagine that you're in
Speaker 3: a parking lot, you're walking to your car, and you're
Speaker 3: looking at a person getting into the car, and as
Speaker 3: you're watching, they slam their fingers in the car door,
Speaker 3: and you can you know, I'll just leave it there.
Speaker 3: I could go into greater detail, but just if you
Speaker 3: can actually picture that and you put yourself there, how
Speaker 3: does that feel awful?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you run the simulation in your own
Speaker 1: mind of what it would feel like to your fingers
Speaker 1: exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: That is empathy. That's exactly it. And so you know
Speaker 3: the interesting part about that. And by the way, empathy
Speaker 3: can be good or bad. You know, I happen to
Speaker 3: give you a horrible example. I could have also said,
Speaker 3: imagine you know, you see the love of your life
Speaker 3: received the biggest career award that it could ever receive.
Speaker 3: You know, they're on stage and you're in the crowd,
Speaker 3: you're in the front row, you're clapping, and they look
Speaker 3: at you and you make eye contact that there's tears
Speaker 3: streaming down your face.
Speaker 2: You feel amazing. That's also empathy, right.
Speaker 3: But the interesting thing is a lot of the research
Speaker 3: that we have on empathy the field of neuroscience, I mean,
Speaker 3: is studying empathy for pain, including some of your own work,
Speaker 3: and what it, as you know, reveals is that the
Speaker 3: brain systems that activate when we are empathizing with someone's
Speaker 3: pain have significant over lap with the brain areas that
Speaker 3: encode pain itself. And specifically, it's not that the brain
Speaker 3: areas that actually encode pain in your fingers are turning on,
Speaker 3: because otherwise you would you know, you would be flinching,
Speaker 3: you'd be.
Speaker 2: Grabbing your hand.
Speaker 3: Rather, there is this what's called the effective, aaff effective,
Speaker 3: or emotional component of pain that is encoded by these
Speaker 3: two areas, the anterior singular cortex and the insula, which
Speaker 3: is that sort of you know, you hit your hand
Speaker 3: and now there's something screaming inside your head saying, oh
Speaker 3: this is horrible, I hate this, this is terrible. That's
Speaker 3: the part of the brain that's activating in the observer.
Speaker 3: And so you know, when we activate those brain areas,
Speaker 3: we create that feeling of disgust and revulsion, which is
Speaker 3: why we are able to feel that sense that you experienced.
Speaker 3: But what's so fascinating to me is that the brain
Speaker 3: is so good at just modeling. It can look at someone,
Speaker 3: it can identify what they're going through and it will
Speaker 3: just model their same brain state in some way in
Speaker 3: your own in your brain and the observer's brain. I
Speaker 3: think again, this goes back to what I mentioned about.
Speaker 3: You know, white scleare, eyebrows. You know, without a word spoken,
Speaker 3: we can detect someone's emotions and start to feel them ourselves. However,
Speaker 3: that doesn't always happen. Empathy is not always present, and
Speaker 3: there are a number of things that determine how engaged
Speaker 3: our brain systems are going to be in.
Speaker 2: The context of empathy.
Speaker 3: And there are a number of things that determine how
Speaker 3: much empathy we will feel and literally how much brain
Speaker 3: activity will be happening in those empathy related areas. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: one of the biggest ones is basically in group outgroup.
Speaker 3: If someone is different from you in nearly any way,
Speaker 3: you will show less activity in those brain areas. And
Speaker 3: of course some of the evidence for that comes from
Speaker 3: your own study, which is one of the best.
Speaker 2: Maybe you should tell this story is better for you
Speaker 2: to tell me.
Speaker 1: I'll just mention it really quickly. Yeah, we did this
Speaker 1: study where we put people on the scanner. They see
Speaker 1: six hands on the screen and the computer boo boo,
Speaker 1: Boo boop goes around, picks one of the hands at random,
Speaker 1: and then you see that hand get stabbed with a
Speaker 1: syringe needle. The control is that you see it get
Speaker 1: touched with a Q tip, which looks visually almost the same.
Speaker 2: And then what happens.
Speaker 1: When you see it stab in the syringe needle. These
Speaker 1: this empathy network lights up. What we summarize is the
Speaker 1: pain matrix. And exactly as you said, it's not that
Speaker 1: you are feeling the pain physically, but you're feeling all
Speaker 1: the other stuff about what would that be like if
Speaker 1: my hand had been stabbed. You're feeling all the disgust
Speaker 1: and the effective component of the pain. Okay, Now what
Speaker 1: we do is we just label each hand with a
Speaker 1: one word label Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, Hindu, atheistoop.
Speaker 2: The computer goes around, picks a hand.
Speaker 1: You see that hand gets stabbed, and the question is
Speaker 1: does your brain care as much if it's a member
Speaker 1: of your out group? And the result was that your
Speaker 1: brain does not care as much. We tested all groups.
Speaker 1: We tested people of every religion, plus atheists as well.
Speaker 1: Even atheists have a big empathic response when they see
Speaker 1: the atheist hand get stabbed. Than when they see any
Speaker 1: of the other groups. But this is true for every religion,
Speaker 1: every group. You just you care more about your label
Speaker 1: and less about the other labels. And this is something
Speaker 1: that's very very clear to show and very striking and
Speaker 1: very depressing in some way.
Speaker 2: But yes, we are we have higher empathy for our
Speaker 2: in groups.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and religion is one that's you know, very salient
Speaker 3: in the world, especially today. But also another thing I
Speaker 3: love about the study is the Augustinian and Justinian right right.
Speaker 1: So what we did there is we had people come
Speaker 1: into the lab, new participants, and we said, here, here's
Speaker 1: a coin. Toss the coin. If it's heads, you're an Augustinian.
Speaker 1: If it's tails, you're a Justinian. So they toss the
Speaker 1: coin and they find which team they're on. We give
Speaker 1: them a wristband that says the name of their team.
Speaker 1: We remind them of their team. They go in the scanner.
Speaker 1: Now they see the same thing happening, but the computer
Speaker 1: is stabbing either Augustinian or Justinian hands.
Speaker 2: Now, the point is these labels are totally arbitrare.
Speaker 1: You're the one who tossed the coins, so you know
Speaker 1: it's random which team you're on. But Nonetheless, we can
Speaker 1: still detect that there's a bigger difference about your in
Speaker 1: group getting stabbed versus your out group. Even something like
Speaker 1: an arbitrary made up label still induces this in group
Speaker 1: out group response.
Speaker 3: And that's, you know, a bit concerning, and you know,
Speaker 3: it makes sense in the world of a couple hundred.
Speaker 2: Thousand years ago. Right, you have your tribe.
Speaker 3: It's important that you care about your tribe because if
Speaker 3: they die, you're probably gonna die. But if you come
Speaker 3: upon a rival tribesmen in the woods being attacked or
Speaker 3: you know, a tree fell on them, it's actually more
Speaker 3: supportive for your survival arguably if you don't feel a thing,
Speaker 3: if you just let them die and you move on
Speaker 3: and you go home to your tribe and you're safe.
Speaker 2: So, you know, back then it made a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Now we live in a.
Speaker 3: Very different world, and empathy is so core to the
Speaker 3: way we connect with others and the way we relate
Speaker 3: to others. You know, I worry that with less empathy nowadays,
Speaker 3: because of all these new ways we're finding to sort
Speaker 3: of divide ourselves from one another, that we may not
Speaker 3: be functioning as yeah as a society, you know, and
Speaker 3: our evolutionary ancestors would agree with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Although the good news is there is one thing that
Speaker 1: we found from our studies on this over the years
Speaker 1: is that the way to combat this has to do
Speaker 1: with complexifying the relationships, which is to say, let's say
Speaker 1: somebody is in a different group than I am, but
Speaker 1: they're also they happen to share this membership in this
Speaker 1: other group with me, and they happen to, you know,
Speaker 1: live in the same place I live, and they happen
Speaker 1: to like bike riding the way I do, and they
Speaker 1: have whatever.
Speaker 2: Then I've got all.
Speaker 1: These things where I'm like, oh, well, the sort of
Speaker 1: the sort of in my our group, and the more
Speaker 1: it gets complexified, the better that relationship is. The place
Speaker 1: where this becomes the real problem is when you have
Speaker 1: some group that you say, oh, they're clear.
Speaker 2: Nothing like me.
Speaker 1: And of course the history of propaganda across place and
Speaker 1: time is all about saying, oh, those people they're like animals,
Speaker 1: or they're like viruses, or they're like robots or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's something that's not human. They're so different from
Speaker 1: me that I have nothing in common with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although twenty years from now they may not be
Speaker 3: saying they're like robots anymore, because robots will be quite like.
Speaker 2: Us, right at least AI chatbots quite right.
Speaker 1: And I was going to ask you what is the
Speaker 1: difference between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy?
Speaker 3: Yes, so right in the beginning I described that empathy
Speaker 3: can be either understanding someone's emotions or feeling their emotions.
Speaker 3: Cognitive empathy is that first one, so you're able to
Speaker 3: into it what someone is going through, for example, in
Speaker 3: the hand slamming in the car door example, by looking
Speaker 3: at them, seeing their reaction, their facial expression, whatever sounds
Speaker 3: are emanating from them, which are probably going to be
Speaker 3: uncomfortable to listen to. All those things, you can tell, Okay,
Speaker 3: this person's in pain. That's the emotion they're feeling. I
Speaker 3: can understand that. Emotional empathy, though, is to share and
Speaker 3: step into those emotions, which would be in your case,
Speaker 3: I asked you, how does it feelings that it felt horrible?
Speaker 3: That emotional component of feeling something in response, that's emotional empathy.
Speaker 2: So is it possible to become more empathic? It is?
Speaker 3: It is so Interestingly, empathy is something that we learn
Speaker 3: and develop in early life. Most of you know, like
Speaker 3: I said, you learn that you push Johnny down a
Speaker 3: slide and he starts crying, and of course this is
Speaker 3: in childhood, not in adulthood. But Johnny falls, it's your fault.
Speaker 3: You feel bad. You recognize, Oh he feels bad, I
Speaker 3: feel bad too. Through these experiences, you develop empathy in childhood,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't mean that when you reach adulthood that
Speaker 3: you no longer can grow and develop. And there are
Speaker 3: actually some really fascinating studies where they've put people through
Speaker 3: the specific empathy and compassion trainings and found that not
Speaker 3: only are those empathic capabilities flexible, that people can grow
Speaker 3: and become more empathic, but also that it's associated with
Speaker 3: changes structural changes in the brain. And what's really interesting
Speaker 3: is the two exercises that they put these people through
Speaker 3: that really stick out to me. One is a loving
Speaker 3: Kindness meditation, which if anyone's interested, you know, you could
Speaker 3: basically YouTube is Loving Kindness Meditation and find it. It's basically,
Speaker 3: you are entering this relaxed state, you're thinking of someone.
Speaker 3: It could be someone you love, someone you care about,
Speaker 3: or it could be a stranger, or it could be
Speaker 3: the entire universe, and then you're just extending love and
Speaker 3: kindness onto them and you know, you're in a very
Speaker 3: relaxed state. It's a really beautiful thing to experience. But
Speaker 3: that exercise, as part of a larger training is associated
Speaker 3: with greater empathic abilities. The other is empathic listening, which
Speaker 3: is you sit down with a partner and that person
Speaker 3: tells you about something that they experienced in ideally the
Speaker 3: last twenty four hours, something that was emotional for them,
Speaker 3: that made them feel either good or bad. And that
Speaker 3: person is meant to tell you in as great of
Speaker 3: detail as possible, what that experience was like, how it felt.
Speaker 3: And your job is to do absolutely nothing but listen.
Speaker 3: You cannot interject, you cannot you know, interrupt them. You
Speaker 3: just sit and you listen and and you know, emphasis
Speaker 3: on listen. You're taking it in as they're describing how
Speaker 3: it felt. You're trying to imagine what it would feel
Speaker 3: like for you. So you're basically taking these empathy systems
Speaker 3: for a test drive. You're engaging them in a basically
Speaker 3: practice run, you know, which isn't a practice run, it's
Speaker 3: a real run, but it's you're.
Speaker 2: Focusing on the empathic component of it.
Speaker 3: You're really trying to feel what they're feeling, and you're
Speaker 3: not interrupting them to say, oh, I went through something
Speaker 3: like that before.
Speaker 2: You know, you're just taking it in.
Speaker 3: And so those two exercises, among other things, are associated
Speaker 3: in adults with those positive changes.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to cover two more topics. Is social
Speaker 1: media good for us or bad for us?
Speaker 3: Generally bad sadly, and I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: you know, the lived experience is consistent with that. You know,
Speaker 3: you open social media, first couple of minutes, you're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is you know, doing the trick. I'm relaxing, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of stepping away from real life. I'm forgetting about
Speaker 3: my problems, and then all of a sudden you look
Speaker 3: and it's like two hours later and you're thinking, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, what just happened. A lot of people experience
Speaker 3: that unfortunately. But that's not the reason why it's bad
Speaker 3: for us. It's bad for us for a number of
Speaker 3: other reasons. By the way, when I say it's bad
Speaker 3: for us, the more people use social media generally, they
Speaker 3: tend to be more depressed, more anxious, they sleep worse.
Speaker 3: That's one of the key mediators, it seems, because when
Speaker 3: people spend you know, those who score higher when they're
Speaker 3: asked how much time do you spend per week on
Speaker 3: social media?
Speaker 2: Those who score higher, where do they find that time?
Speaker 3: While they're often laying awake at night watching videos instead
Speaker 3: of sleeping, And as we know.
Speaker 2: Sleep is a big mediator of mood, So that.
Speaker 3: Could be the reason why people who use social media
Speaker 3: are more depressed and anxious. But you know, there's also
Speaker 3: it's very isolating in itself. You know, the funny thing
Speaker 3: about social media. I'm doing air quotes for those only
Speaker 3: listening social air quotes media is that people who use
Speaker 3: social media more feel more lonely. They end up feeling
Speaker 3: more isolated because it is isolating. You're not actually interacting
Speaker 3: with anyone. You're spending time alone with a device that's
Speaker 3: approximating social interaction and doing just enough to hit those
Speaker 3: social rewards systems in the brain to keep you hooked
Speaker 3: and keep you swiping and scrolling, but you're not actually
Speaker 3: interacting with anybody. And so I believe that that's a
Speaker 3: key part of it. But you know, there's also a
Speaker 3: key role of many other things. The social comparison. You know,
Speaker 3: people are posting their very best moments on social media,
Speaker 3: so you're scrolling and being like, oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 3: doing terrible at life compared to these people who are
Speaker 3: doing so well every time I log on. So in general,
Speaker 3: you know I, as you know, I post on social
Speaker 3: media a lot, and you know, one of the messages
Speaker 3: I try to keep consistent is basically, go away, stop
Speaker 3: stop watching this, and go you know, outside, go live life,
Speaker 3: better things to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to ask you about something different now,
Speaker 1: which is so my entire life. I've always had dogs,
Speaker 1: and humans have been with this other species for such
Speaker 1: a long time. Why are our relationships with dogs so important?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a dog lover myself. Dogs are amazing. My
Speaker 3: dog Zoey is around here somewhere. So dogs, it's so fascinating.
Speaker 3: I mentioned the evolutionary history of humans that we survive
Speaker 3: better in groups, right, So we have this this social reward,
Speaker 3: this oxytocin, this glue that holds us together, humans and dogs,
Speaker 3: presumably if they've survived better as one unit when they
Speaker 3: exist together. And the relationship between dogs and humans, by
Speaker 3: the way, was thought to occur somewhere between like twenty
Speaker 3: seven and forty thousand years ago, so we've been living
Speaker 3: together for so long. We've been living together for so
Speaker 3: long and working together that when geneticists look back at
Speaker 3: our genes, they see similar changes over time in the
Speaker 3: genes between humans and dogs, which suggests that we face
Speaker 3: the same challenges of ancient Earth together and evolved through
Speaker 3: the same mechanisms to survive, which is awesome and just
Speaker 3: you know, go give your dog a kiss. Anyways, the
Speaker 3: reason that dogs are so beloved to us is because
Speaker 3: they activate these social reward systems just like other humans do,
Speaker 3: just like children do. And that when we look into
Speaker 3: the eyes of our dogs, when we pet our dogs,
Speaker 3: we have all these benefits. We produce oxytocin, which is
Speaker 3: probably why we love them so much. You know, we
Speaker 3: show lower blood pressure. People who have dogs and also
Speaker 3: other animals too, generally have greater health. They are more
Speaker 3: likely to just live longer basically, but also like lower
Speaker 3: rates of heart disease things like that. And you know,
Speaker 3: I actually i'd never said this. Earlier, I mentioned that
Speaker 3: there were three reasons socializing is good for you. One
Speaker 3: of them is that it boosts your mood through these
Speaker 3: social reward systems. The second is that it can lead
Speaker 3: to cognitive reserve and the third that I never actually
Speaker 3: said is that, you know, oxytocin, people think of it
Speaker 3: as this love hormone, which it is. It's really important
Speaker 3: for bonding, but oxytocin is also this incredibly powerful medicinal
Speaker 3: compound in the body. Basically, oxytocin is anti inflammatory. Oxytocin
Speaker 3: can produce stress and anxiety. Oxytocin it can help bone growth,
Speaker 3: it can help with wound healing. It has all these
Speaker 3: amazing properties. It's also neuroprotective, which makes sense because when
Speaker 3: we are in a position to mate perhaps and we're
Speaker 3: producing oxytocin, we want to be physically fit to make
Speaker 3: sure that we are probably going to produce a child.
Speaker 3: So the fact that oxytocin has all these amazing health benefits,
Speaker 3: I don't think we should forget about the fact that
Speaker 3: dogs drive the release of oxytocin as well. And you know,
Speaker 3: I really do believe that the isolation of older people
Speaker 3: in America and worldwide is a massive, unspoken public health crisis. Isolation,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, is really bad for us. As we
Speaker 3: grow older, we are more prone to a range of conditions,
Speaker 3: and oxytocin may be healing. As I said, it's neuroprotective.
Speaker 3: So I really think that a simple intervention for older
Speaker 3: human beings is to get a dog, because they may
Speaker 3: be able to sort of scratch some of that same
Speaker 3: biological itch that social interaction does, especially for those who
Speaker 3: are you know, maybe have trouble getting out of the
Speaker 3: house and so they're stuck at home and so it's
Speaker 3: exacerbating their isolation. And the reason for that is because
Speaker 3: dogs basically hitched a ride on our evolutionary bonding systems
Speaker 3: to connect with us and stick together for the same
Speaker 3: reason that we are social animals. You know, they dry
Speaker 3: boxytosin release, which drives dopamine release. We love being around them,
Speaker 3: but they are also good for us because this connection
Speaker 3: is meaningful for the brain.
Speaker 1: So the relationship between the caregiver and the dog and
Speaker 1: the relationship between the parent and the child.
Speaker 3: What's the similarities there? There are a few, one being
Speaker 3: that the oxytocin component. You know, oxytocin's key for parent
Speaker 3: child relationships because you know, it's a tremendously powerful glue.
Speaker 3: You need to be glued to your child so that
Speaker 3: the child survives, And with dogs, they activate the same system.
Speaker 3: May be simply looking into your eyes. The eyes of
Speaker 3: your dog can dry oxytocin release not just in you,
Speaker 3: by the way, but in the dog too, because they
Speaker 3: need to be motivated to hang out with us as well. Interestingly, though,
Speaker 3: when they had wolves look in the eyes of humans,
Speaker 3: the wolves didn't show this oxytocin rise, suggesting that dogs
Speaker 3: evolved in order to bond with humans or in the
Speaker 3: process of forming this long term relationship with us. The
Speaker 3: other thing, though, beyond the biological comparisons, dogs actually treat
Speaker 3: us like parents, like as if they were children.
Speaker 2: Anyone who owns a dog knows this to be true.
Speaker 3: But what's really interesting is in psychological studies of children,
Speaker 3: you know, there are various attachment styles and the most.
Speaker 2: Common is a secure attachment style.
Speaker 3: And the way this can be tested is through this
Speaker 3: thing called the strange situation test, where the baby is
Speaker 3: put into a strange situation. So imagine your mom, you
Speaker 3: have the baby, You go into this room. You know,
Speaker 3: baby plays, looks, there's some toys on the ground, whatever.
Speaker 3: Then this stranger comes in grabs a seat nearby, and
Speaker 3: you know, the baby is kind of looking at this
Speaker 3: guy who's is a weird guy.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Mom gets up and leaves.
Speaker 3: So now the baby is by themselves in this room
Speaker 3: with this stranger, and the way they behave in this
Speaker 3: st situation can suggest how they basically relate to their parent,
Speaker 3: and so what often happens is the babies will feel
Speaker 3: skeptical of the stranger until mom returns, and then willingly
Speaker 3: play with the stranger, suggesting that they view mom as
Speaker 3: a beacon of safety. Right when Mom's nearby, it's safe
Speaker 3: to play with this person a couple, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Decades after that study was published, scientists did the same
Speaker 3: thing with dogs and their caregivers, where they had the
Speaker 3: same exact situation. Person walks their dog into this room,
Speaker 3: there's a stranger there, and then the caregiver gets up
Speaker 3: and walks away, And what they found was that the
Speaker 3: majority of dogs, just like children, will avoid the stranger
Speaker 3: until the parent gets back or the caregiver gets back,
Speaker 3: and then they will be more comfortable socializing and playing
Speaker 3: with the stranger. So biologically, yes, it's similar, but also psychologically,
Speaker 3: from the dog's perspective, they may also view us.
Speaker 2: In a similar way, at least to the way a
Speaker 2: children view parents.
Speaker 1: Oh beautiful, okay, So subsuming back out to the big picture.
Speaker 1: We've got these extraordinarily social brains. We are social species.
Speaker 1: What should we all be keeping in mind about how
Speaker 1: to best navigate ourselves through the world in terms of
Speaker 1: the social context.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm very firm believer that we can gain a
Speaker 3: ton of benefit, that there's this uneaten ripe fruit of
Speaker 3: social interaction effectively everywhere we go in basically strangers. I
Speaker 3: think that if we are willing to open ourselves to
Speaker 3: interacting with strangers more, we can gain a lot. And
Speaker 3: there's evidence on this too that people when they are
Speaker 3: invited by scientists to talk to a stranger, they feel better.
Speaker 3: And I think that a lot of the time we
Speaker 3: don't do that because we think we're going to be rejected.
Speaker 3: We think that they're going to think we're weird or
Speaker 3: whatever we thinking. But the truth is people don't mind
Speaker 3: being spoken to, they don't mind having a conversation as
Speaker 3: long as it's in the right content.
Speaker 2: And so I guess my answer to your question is we.
Speaker 3: Should identify ways to explore new social domains that are
Speaker 3: comfortable for everybody. Of course, you know, you don't want
Speaker 3: to go up to a person on the train and
Speaker 3: pull their ear, butt out of their ear and say, hey,
Speaker 3: what are you listening too? But finding when we have
Speaker 3: these moments which we often have. You know, you're sitting
Speaker 3: in a doctor's office waiting room, and you know it's
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes go by, and you're doing nothing, and there's
Speaker 3: six other people sitting near you that are doing the
Speaker 3: exact same thing. Nobody's talking to each other. Why don't
Speaker 3: we talk to each other? Like I said, I'm an extrovert.
Speaker 3: This may be terrible advice for introverts, and again, it's
Speaker 3: all about finding that cadence of where you are comfortable,
Speaker 3: and for many people this may not be comfortable at all.
Speaker 3: But I think what what everyone should really be doing
Speaker 3: is just that figuring out what sort of social schedule,
Speaker 3: or what I refer to it in the book as
Speaker 3: the social diet we're eating or taking in is most healthy,
Speaker 3: most beneficial for our mood and well being, and with
Speaker 3: mood being the real output variable that we're measuring, so
Speaker 3: I think, you know, if we take time to maybe journal.
Speaker 3: I do provide a social journal in the book as well,
Speaker 3: where you can, after you come home from an interaction,
Speaker 3: answer a bunch of questions. You know who was I
Speaker 3: with how many people were there, where were we how
Speaker 3: busy was it? Also, what do we talk about all
Speaker 3: sorts of things like that, And if we can start
Speaker 3: to interrogate our interactions in a way that we recognize, oh,
Speaker 3: this thing makes it less pleasant than this thing. You know.
Speaker 3: I don't like being in a bar where it's shoulder
Speaker 3: to shoulder and now I've packed, you know, squeezing through
Speaker 3: to see my friends, or screaming over the music. Or
Speaker 3: on the other hand, I don't really like being in
Speaker 3: one on one environments where it's quiet and we're just
Speaker 3: talking and looking each other's eyes. You know, if we
Speaker 3: can configure our interactions in a way that allow us
Speaker 3: to step into a new level of connected connectedness, I
Speaker 3: think that could be really good for us, not only
Speaker 3: on the individual level, on our for our brains and
Speaker 3: our health in general, but also for the sake of
Speaker 3: our entire society, because the data are very real that
Speaker 3: we've become much more fragmented and isolated in the last day.
Speaker 1: So that was my interview with Ben Rain, author of
Speaker 1: the new book Why Brains Need Friends, and our conversation
Speaker 1: today took us from babies to robots to social media
Speaker 1: to dogs, to the bonds that.
Speaker 2: Sustain us in old age.
Speaker 1: The lesson that comes up is that it doesn't really
Speaker 1: work to think about the brain as a loan captain
Speaker 1: at the helm. Instead, it's more like an instrument that
Speaker 1: is meant to play in a symphony. And today we
Speaker 1: covered the biology that makes connection essential. We talked about
Speaker 1: how we can leverage the science to help our brains thrive.
Speaker 1: In wrapping this up, I just want to remind us
Speaker 1: that connection doesn't always mean crowds or noise or constant presence.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just the quiet looks between two people who
Speaker 1: know each other well. Sometimes it's the weight of a
Speaker 1: dog's head on your knee. Sometimes it's chatting with a
Speaker 1: friend over call. Sometimes this holding a baby. What matters
Speaker 1: is just these invisible strands that tie your nervous system
Speaker 1: to other people. We have to keep an eye on
Speaker 1: this proactively, because in a world that moves fast and
Speaker 1: rewards self sufficiency, it's easy to forget to tend.
Speaker 2: To those threads.
Speaker 1: We're rushing, we're doom scrolling, and we convince ourselves often
Speaker 1: that we'll make that call tomorrow. But the science is clear.
Speaker 1: Our brains are built for interaction. And in fact, when
Speaker 1: I made my television show The Brain, I devoted an
Speaker 1: entire episode to this called why Do I Need You?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I want to remind you that one of the.
Speaker 1: Most important things you can do for your mental clarity,
Speaker 1: for your emotional resilience, for your physical health, it's one
Speaker 1: of the simplest things. Just stop and look up and
Speaker 1: connect with other people. Think of conversation like medicine, think
Speaker 1: of friendship like food. So now that we've reached the
Speaker 1: end of today's podcast, think of someone that you haven't
Speaker 1: reached out to for a while and pick up the
Speaker 1: phone and arrange that coffee or hike or meal. It's
Speaker 1: easy to do, and it's one of the most important
Speaker 1: things that you can do for the health and happiness
Speaker 1: of your brain. Go to eagleman dot com slash podcast
Speaker 1: more information and to find further reading. Go in the
Speaker 1: weekly discussions with other people on my substack, and check
Speaker 1: out and subscribe to Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos
Speaker 1: of each episode and to leave comments Until next time.
Speaker 1: I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.