Full Transcript for Steve Ramirez: How Memory Shapes Grief, Addiction & Who You Are

kind of thing. And oftentimes, 39 00:01:53.810 --> 00:01:57.579 I think neuroscience is gets locked away, you know, in 40 00:01:57.620 --> 00:02:01.420 this language. And you address that in your book in 41 00:02:01.459 --> 00:02:06.019 terms of, you know, the pedantic kind of jargony way 42 00:02:06.099 --> 00:02:09.419 that scientists learn to talk to each other, right? So 43 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:11.000 for those of you who don't know, when you are 44 00:02:11.039 --> 00:02:13.789 in a lab, it is like a war zone. You 45 00:02:13.849 --> 00:02:18.189 have to stand up and present things. And the whole 46 00:02:18.250 --> 00:02:21.449 game that you're playing is like, can somebody shoot you down? 47 00:02:21.490 --> 00:02:23.729 And then there's kind of this hidden scoreboard of like, 48 00:02:24.229 --> 00:02:27.610 you know, who wins the round, if you will, of 49 00:02:27.669 --> 00:02:31.310 that battle? And can you defend your ideas? So in 50 00:02:31.370 --> 00:02:36.800 that world, right, you adopt this really complicated language in 51 00:02:36.860 --> 00:02:40.520 order to be taken seriously. And then you do something 52 00:02:40.560 --> 00:02:44.560 crazy like yourself and you become a professor, you know, 53 00:02:44.919 --> 00:02:49.960 and you have to translate that to non-neuroscientists, right? So 54 00:02:50.599 --> 00:02:52.930 the first thing I want to deal with is, you know, 55 00:02:52.990 --> 00:02:55.580 what do you think with your book, How to Change 56 00:02:55.620 --> 00:02:58.199 a Brain, what do you think is the kind of 57 00:02:58.379 --> 00:03:02.780 primary message to the public that they can understand that 58 00:03:02.969 --> 00:03:05.710 is so essential about that, that they should know about 59 00:03:05.750 --> 00:03:06.129 their brain? 60 00:03:07.110 --> 00:03:09.250 Yeah. So there's a couple of things. 61 00:03:09.449 --> 00:03:13.530 I think the first that comes to mind is to 62 00:03:13.629 --> 00:03:19.530 really be wowed by how amazing our memories really are 63 00:03:19.750 --> 00:03:23.770 and how amazing memories really can be. For instance, like I, 64 00:03:24.129 --> 00:03:26.770 I think about this in terms of, you know, I 65 00:03:26.789 --> 00:03:29.810 can think of the best day of my life and 66 00:03:29.930 --> 00:03:32.449 within a few seconds I get euphoric and giddy and 67 00:03:32.509 --> 00:03:34.990 excited to go out and explore the world. Or I 68 00:03:35.009 --> 00:03:37.509 could think of some of the harder days of my 69 00:03:37.550 --> 00:03:40.050 life and within a few seconds be moved to tears. 70 00:03:40.550 --> 00:03:44.490 So depending on which book of memory I've decided to 71 00:03:44.530 --> 00:03:46.909 pull out of the library, I can either be moved 72 00:03:46.939 --> 00:03:50.060 to tears or be euphoric in like five seconds or less. 73 00:03:50.520 --> 00:03:53.060 So the fact that our memories can change do that 74 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:56.360 without breaking a sweat and

without really even batting. 75 00:03:56.039 --> 00:03:57.909 An eye is incredible. 76 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:01.189 And we all have that capacity to pull from those 77 00:04:01.250 --> 00:04:04.870 libraries of memories and to see how it changes everything 78 00:04:04.909 --> 00:04:07.469 from our thinking to our mood to how we interact 79 00:04:07.509 --> 00:04:11.090 with the world. So that's probably the biggest scientific message 80 00:04:11.330 --> 00:04:16.029 is that memories are capable of adjusting our entire biology 81 00:04:16.329 --> 00:04:20.230 head to toe. The personal message in the book is 82 00:04:20.290 --> 00:04:22.750 that It really was a way for me to honor 83 00:04:22.810 --> 00:04:24.149 my late friend, Shu Liu. 84 00:04:24.649 --> 00:04:28.629 And that was a way where I could write. 85 00:04:28.470 --> 00:04:30.920 The book from the perspective of my memories of our 86 00:04:30.949 --> 00:04:34.160 time in lab together, where we were able to artificially 87 00:04:34.199 --> 00:04:37.620 manipulate memories, but use that time together to really just 88 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:41.060 think more fondly about like, we did really exciting science, 89 00:04:41.319 --> 00:04:43.439 but we just had a great time also being lab 90 00:04:43.490 --> 00:04:44.709 partners and chilling with. 91 00:04:44.649 --> 00:04:45.870 Each other day in and day out. 92 00:04:46.430 --> 00:04:49.370 And that humanity, that kind of beating heart that happens 93 00:04:49.410 --> 00:04:51.689 behind the scenes in science is something that I really 94 00:04:51.730 --> 00:04:54.009 wanted to take center stage in the book. 95 00:04:54.720 --> 00:04:58.180 I really appreciate that you brought that in because science 96 00:04:58.199 --> 00:05:02.980 can be very boring and sterile sometimes. And I really 97 00:05:03.019 --> 00:05:07.750 appreciate that you brought in Shu's story and your relationship 98 00:05:07.850 --> 00:05:10.949 and the level of inspiration that you had from him. 99 00:05:10.990 --> 00:05:13.269 It made me think about, because we've all lost somebody, 100 00:05:13.850 --> 00:05:17.269 you know, even if you're a younger generation, Gen Z, 101 00:05:17.300 --> 00:05:21.019 you might've lost a grandparent, you know, and a dog, 102 00:05:21.220 --> 00:05:25.199 you know, whatever, this life is full of loss, right? And, 103 00:05:25.220 --> 00:05:27.720 and how we cope with that loss and how we 104 00:05:27.759 --> 00:05:32.050 remember that loss. And I often think about death as 105 00:05:32.310 --> 00:05:34.910 a messenger or a teacher, you know, what is this 106 00:05:34.970 --> 00:05:39.189 particular death that happened in this particular way teaching me? 107 00:05:40.189 --> 00:05:43.160 And one such death in my life was a high 108 00:05:43.180 --> 00:05:47.420 school friend for anybody who's a high school buddy who's 109 00:05:47.459 --> 00:05:53.220 watching this. Her name's Stacey Bell. And she was perfect. 110 00:05:53.819 --> 00:05:57.319 And I was imperfect. I was, you know, kind of 111 00:05:57.790 --> 00:06:00.490 my grades were, you know, because I was very depressed. 112 00:06:00.689 --> 00:06:04.089 And she seemed to have a really loving family. And 113 00:06:04.110 --> 00:06:06.029 then she all of a sudden got hit by a 114 00:06:06.050 --> 00:06:09.519 truck in the middle of college and in the middle 115 00:06:09.699 --> 00:06:12.339 of Oklahoma while she was going to do something very 116 00:06:13.139 --> 00:06:16.319 lovely and volunteer for, you know, homeless people in Tulsa 117 00:06:16.339 --> 00:06:18.800 or whatever, you know, so, so it was just tragic. 118 00:06:19.339 --> 00:06:24.230 And I immediately felt like I have to live for 119 00:06:24.290 --> 00:06:28.189 Stacey now. And it really, it really, she kind of 120 00:06:28.850 --> 00:06:32.750 inspired me to elevate my game in her honor. And 121 00:06:32.769 --> 00:06:35.410 I think that's what I was catching on from your 122 00:06:35.449 --> 00:06:37.449 experience with SHU. So why don't you, why don't we 123 00:06:37.509 --> 00:06:39.829 honor SHU for a second here? And, you know, I 124 00:06:40.990 --> 00:06:43.509 don't want to get emotional, but, you know, like such 125 00:06:43.529 --> 00:06:45.589 a beautiful relationship between you two. 126 00:06:46.610 --> 00:06:47.009 Yeah. 127 00:06:47.129 --> 00:06:49.209 I mean, first, thank you for sharing all of that. 128 00:06:49.269 --> 00:06:51.579 Like it's, it really is a testament to just how, 129 00:06:52.220 --> 00:06:55.879 how fragile life can be and how like there's a 130 00:06:55.899 --> 00:06:59.139 real whiplash that happens, right? When someone passes away, like 131 00:06:59.180 --> 00:07:03.060 there's no real playbook for it or preparation for those 132 00:07:03.100 --> 00:07:05.399 kinds of things at all. And I think you hit 133 00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:09.269 the nail on the head that one way that one 134 00:07:09.329 --> 00:07:13.129 transformation that we all undergo is that we all become 135 00:07:13.730 --> 00:07:16.129 some kind of memory in some capacity. And like we 136 00:07:16.170 --> 00:07:18.620 all kind of exist in the brains of the people 137 00:07:18.680 --> 00:07:21.259 who we've influenced or touched in some capacity in our lives. 138 00:07:21.800 --> 00:07:24.519 And it's really it's the best way I can think 139 00:07:24.579 --> 00:07:26.920 about it is that it's one of the most bittersweet 140 00:07:27.019 --> 00:07:28.939 truths that I can think of. And, you know, the 141 00:07:29.079 --> 00:07:32.180 irony of studying memory and knowing that we're in the 142 00:07:32.199 --> 00:07:34.550 process of becoming a memory is not lost on me. 143 00:07:34.579 --> 00:07:38.449 And it's something that to me, the best word I 144 00:07:38.470 --> 00:07:41.209 can think of describing it is that it's very providential 145 00:07:41.269 --> 00:07:45.769 where like shoes life, the way that it influenced me, 146 00:07:45.790 -->

00:07:49.110 it became so much more of a cornerstone of my 147 00:07:49.149 --> 00:07:51.750 personality and my approach to science and my approach to 148 00:07:51.790 --> 00:07:56.240 life after he passed, because It forced me to reconcile, like, 149 00:07:56.540 --> 00:07:58.120 who am I as a person? Who am I as 150 00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:00.579 a scientist? What does Shu mean to me as a person? 151 00:08:00.620 --> 00:08:03.120 What does Shu mean to me as a scientist? And 152 00:08:03.300 --> 00:08:06.959 how can I begin to even scratch the surface of 153 00:08:08.139 --> 00:08:13.300 resolving something as complicated as grief, let alone having to, 154 00:08:13.379 --> 00:08:16.360 in a sense, repurpose our memories and our times together 155 00:08:16.740 --> 00:08:18.459 in a way that I think could help me resolve 156 00:08:18.500 --> 00:08:21.139 grief and define some kind of purposefulness for our time 157 00:08:21.199 --> 00:08:24.850 together beyond just thinking about it and feeling bittersweet about 158 00:08:24.870 --> 00:08:26.970 the times we had together. And the way that I 159 00:08:27.069 --> 00:08:31.569 think I've attempted to do that at least is twofold. 160 00:08:31.790 --> 00:08:34.149 And one is through our science that I really do 161 00:08:34.200 --> 00:08:36.940 believe that the science that we do in the lab 162 00:08:37.519 --> 00:08:41.639 is shoes influence in the scientific world in perpetuity. Like 163 00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:44.179 it's something that is there forever because the work that 164 00:08:44.220 --> 00:08:47.220 we did on being able to manipulate memories started off 165 00:08:47.259 --> 00:08:49.960 with the two of us, but now there's thousands of 166 00:08:50.039 --> 00:08:52.620 projects that are centering on this idea of trying to 167 00:08:52.730 --> 00:08:56.070 alter memories in some capacity. And to me, like every 168 00:08:56.090 --> 00:08:58.690 data point that's collected, there's a bit of shoe in 169 00:08:58.710 --> 00:09:01.230 there in all of them because of how fundamental he 170 00:09:01.289 --> 00:09:05.289 was to these discoveries. And then the personal level is 171 00:09:05.370 --> 00:09:09.429 more of one thing that has been able to particularly help. 172 00:09:09.870 --> 00:09:12.120 And this came, I think this, I came to this 173 00:09:12.159 --> 00:09:16.779 realization when writing this book is that Losing someone is, 174 00:09:17.100 --> 00:09:18.730 I mean, it's got to be one of, if not 175 00:09:18.759 --> 00:09:20.889 the hardest things that I think that us as humans 176 00:09:20.929 --> 00:09:23.769 can possibly go through. So it feels weird sometimes to 177 00:09:23.809 --> 00:09:27.250 think about if there's an upside or a silver lining 178 00:09:27.269 --> 00:09:30.210 when we're talking about death, because it almost feels crude 179 00:09:30.269 --> 00:09:33.840 to even suggest that. But I will say that one 180 00:09:33.860 --> 00:09:36.340 of the things that has been helpful on my end is, 181 00:09:36.940 --> 00:09:39.879 in a sense, being able to use my time of 182 00:09:40.399 --> 00:09:44.830 grieving loss and accepting what loss truly means. But being 183 00:09:44.889 --> 00:09:48.039 able to now hold the door open for others that 184 00:09:48.080 --> 00:09:51.299 might be going through something similar, because I can relate 185 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:53.259 and I can connect on a level that I just 186 00:09:53.480 --> 00:09:56.950 really wouldn't have been able to before, not having experienced 187 00:09:57.009 --> 00:09:59.169 the depths of loss and how hard it could be. 188 00:09:59.649 --> 00:10:03.480 So one kind of like sort of recycling of our 189 00:10:03.519 --> 00:10:06.480 time together that I think has actually been the gift 190 00:10:06.519 --> 00:10:08.659 that keeps on giving is being able to connect with 191 00:10:08.740 --> 00:10:13.220 others over something as terrible as losing someone. Because without 192 00:10:13.320 --> 00:10:16.450 saying really much, we already know like, oh, wow, that 193 00:10:17.110 --> 00:10:19.990 you've been through the gauntlet of the roller coaster of 194 00:10:20.029 --> 00:10:22.909 human experience that happens after loss. And we all have 195 00:10:22.950 --> 00:10:24.610 our own ways of trying to make sense of it 196 00:10:24.649 --> 00:10:27.450 and trying to resolve it. But connecting and being able 197 00:10:27.509 --> 00:10:31.360 to help alleviate any semblance of grief or suffering or 198 00:10:31.399 --> 00:10:34.580 so on has made it feel a different kind of 199 00:10:34.639 --> 00:10:37.379 purposeful nowadays. And writing about it for sure gave me 200 00:10:37.399 --> 00:10:40.120 that language, I think, to be able to connect and 201 00:10:40.159 --> 00:10:41.759 ideally to help on that human level. 202 00:10:42.639 --> 00:10:45.519 Yeah, and I'm going to sort of indulge here because 203 00:10:45.700 --> 00:10:49.120 I have little snapshots into your world over the years, 204 00:10:49.179 --> 00:10:55.090 given how old I am. And one such memory was 205 00:10:55.169 --> 00:10:57.649 when I was in medical school at UCSF, there was 206 00:10:57.710 --> 00:11:01.690 this finding, and I know that it's just a little 207 00:11:02.330 --> 00:11:06.370 pebble in terms of your world at this point, that 208 00:11:06.490 --> 00:11:12.269 people who had trauma, PTSD, that when they scan their brains, 209 00:11:12.389 --> 00:11:15.980 the hippocampus, which is, you know, the public, if they 210 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:20.039 know anything about memory and hippocampus, that's it, right? That's 211 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:22.039 where most people are. So we're going to kind of 212 00:11:22.120 --> 00:11:28.820 color in the extra places around that fact, right? Including 213 00:11:28.860 --> 00:11:31.799 the cortex and things like that that have now been discovered. 214 00:11:31.830 --> 00:11:34.389 And I want you to really describe that because I 215

00:11:34.409 --> 00:11:37.830 have such a simple understanding of memory and so does 216 00:11:37.870 --> 00:11:41.769 everybody else, right? And so in PTSD, they had found 217 00:11:41.809 --> 00:11:45.580 that the hippocampus would shrink. And I thought, that's interesting 218 00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:49.740 because my mom has PTSD. She went to Native American 219 00:11:49.779 --> 00:11:53.639 boarding school involuntarily. She lost her mother at age five. 220 00:11:53.779 --> 00:11:58.370 She was assaulted in foster care systems and things like that. 221 00:11:58.419 --> 00:12:05.090 So it's very much epigenetic in me to care about 222 00:12:05.149 --> 00:12:08.210 that and to think about what what does trauma do 223 00:12:08.230 --> 00:12:10.860 to the brain and especially what does it do to memory? Right. 224 00:12:10.929 --> 00:12:14.259 So if you think about it that way, how, how 225 00:12:14.299 --> 00:12:19.000 would you fill out that story of trauma and that 226 00:12:19.039 --> 00:12:21.679 you could take the big trauma, the little trauma in 227 00:12:21.700 --> 00:12:25.299 this case, you know, loss is a trauma, you know? And, 228 00:12:25.600 --> 00:12:28.700 and so you went through that process and maybe describe, 229 00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:31.250 you know, cause she was only 37. Am I right? 230 00:12:31.730 --> 00:12:33.070 Yeah. 231 00:12:33.250 --> 00:12:37.870 And so here you are young man, you know, dies. 232 00:12:38.009 --> 00:12:41.190 And it didn't even say, you didn't address like how 233 00:12:41.230 --> 00:12:44.210 he died. And I think that's probably private for that reason. 234 00:12:45.450 --> 00:12:48.490 But that is also kind of an ambiguous grief too, right? 235 00:12:49.090 --> 00:12:51.840 And so how did you respond? How did you, did 236 00:12:51.860 --> 00:12:54.259 you go into therapy and did you start a grief 237 00:12:54.279 --> 00:12:57.580 group or did you first have a reaction to that? 238 00:12:58.100 --> 00:12:58.899 Oh, for sure. 239 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:03.460 More of a reaction of like disbelief at first that, 240 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:08.120 you know, the idea that when we met in 2010, 241 00:13:08.120 --> 00:13:12.169 for instance, we agreed from the jump that everything that 242 00:13:12.190 --> 00:13:14.649 we did and everything that we were successful over, we 243 00:13:14.690 --> 00:13:17.350 were going to share. That one plus one equals three, 244 00:13:17.570 --> 00:13:19.629 and that two brains working together are better than one, 245 00:13:19.889 --> 00:13:22.970 and that science doesn't have to be this individual isolation 246 00:13:23.230 --> 00:13:24.129 effort at all. 247 00:13:24.190 --> 00:13:27.169 It can be the total opposite. I love that. Yeah. 248 00:13:27.250 --> 00:13:30.789 Our dream was that when there's discoveries in science that 249 00:13:31.129 --> 00:13:33.340 we would be like the situation room in like NASA 250 00:13:33.399 --> 00:13:35.659 where everyone's like cheering when the Rover lands on Mars, 251 00:13:35.700 --> 00:13:36.559 like that kind of thing. 252 00:13:36.980 --> 00:13:38.019 So we had like a. 253 00:13:38.019 --> 00:13:43.950 Very like wide eyed egalitarian, let's all be comfortable sharing 254 00:13:43.990 --> 00:13:45.809 success because like every data. 255 00:13:45.610 --> 00:13:47.149 Point is, it's. 256 00:13:49.269 --> 00:13:52.389 Making an unknown known in the pursuit of knowledge here. 257 00:13:52.470 --> 00:13:54.490 So it was something that we found just very like, 258 00:13:55.009 --> 00:13:57.750 fundamentally at our core, we thought knowing was better than 259 00:13:57.789 --> 00:14:00.129 not knowing and we could just know more together. 260 00:14:00.409 --> 00:14:02.370 Like it was really that sweet. Yeah. 261 00:14:02.409 --> 00:14:04.570 Like that's straightforward of a philosophy. And we did, we, 262 00:14:04.990 --> 00:14:09.370 all of our like invited talks, we would do together posters. 263 00:14:09.409 --> 00:14:13.370 We would do together our papers. We published as co-first 264 00:14:13.470 --> 00:14:15.320 authors where we just thought like, okay, let's just keep 265 00:14:15.340 --> 00:14:17.750 doing this because it's a winning recipe and it gets 266 00:14:17.799 --> 00:14:19.639 rid of all of the politics. And it's just fun 267 00:14:19.700 --> 00:14:22.549 that way to be able to not think about, some 268 00:14:22.570 --> 00:14:24.529 of the bureaucracy and just kind of get down with 269 00:14:24.549 --> 00:14:29.000 doing the science and interpreting the science. So we imagined 270 00:14:29.009 --> 00:14:34.960 a kind of future together that was pretty dynamic duo 271 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.379 throughout our career. And then to me, like I had 272 00:14:37.460 --> 00:14:41.399 such a like wide-eyed romanticized view of this is my 273 00:14:41.500 --> 00:14:43.639 forever lab partner. Like this is the person that I 274 00:14:43.639 --> 00:14:47.269 can really, sort of my intellectual crutch and in a sense, 275 00:14:47.309 --> 00:14:50.360 like a big scientific brother and, that was there looking 276 00:14:50.600 --> 00:14:53.039 after me as a grad student at the time, and 277 00:14:53.059 --> 00:14:57.779 that meant the world. So when in 2015, when he passed, 278 00:14:58.340 --> 00:15:02.139 that future that we imagined together was not just impossible, 279 00:15:02.500 --> 00:15:05.960 but I had to kind of begin asking, what now? 280 00:15:06.259 --> 00:15:07.899 How do I possibly. 281 00:15:07.460 --> 00:15:11.799 Move forward without a literal other scientific half here that 282 00:15:12.299 --> 00:15:15.820 I leaned on for so much, but also grew with 283 00:15:15.870 --> 00:15:16.710 throughout the process? 284 00:15:18.409 --> 00:15:19.250 The answer was. 285 00:15:19.169 --> 00:15:21.789 That no, like I think a hefty chunk of me 286 00:15:21.830 --> 00:15:24.139 really had to break first before I could really learn. 287 00:15:24.009 -->

00:15:25.440 How to put the pieces back together. 288 00:15:25.980 --> 00:15:29.220 And like at the time, for instance, I think I 289 00:15:29.259 --> 00:15:33.759 was already developing, if not like in the beginning stages 290 00:15:34.179 --> 00:15:37.960 of drinking problematically. But after he passed was around when 291 00:15:38.019 --> 00:15:40.460 I had to finish grad school and around when I 292 00:15:40.690 --> 00:15:44.389 was going to start up my lab in 2016. So 293 00:15:44.409 --> 00:15:46.330 there was a lot of moving pieces that were happening 294 00:15:46.370 --> 00:15:49.250 all at once that had to do with both my 295 00:15:49.309 --> 00:15:53.889 livelihood and my career. So not surprisingly, when I started 296 00:15:53.929 --> 00:15:58.500 drinking more, it was less to really escape anything. And 297 00:15:58.559 --> 00:16:01.759 weirdly enough, it was so that when I drank, I 298 00:16:01.799 --> 00:16:04.600 could let in all of the feelings that I otherwise 299 00:16:04.679 --> 00:16:08.200 really tried to like shove down and ignore for the 300 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:11.629 majority of my life because I didn't understand them. And 301 00:16:11.669 --> 00:16:14.610 I certainly didn't have words for them at all. And 302 00:16:14.629 --> 00:16:16.529 I think that was really the brutal reality that I 303 00:16:16.570 --> 00:16:20.399 encountered first was, oh, man, I have so many thoughts 304 00:16:20.460 --> 00:16:23.019 and feelings about things that have to do with life 305 00:16:23.080 --> 00:16:25.820 and death. And I have zero answer for any of them. 306 00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:30.190 And as a scientist, that really tugged my heartstrings, but 307 00:16:30.230 --> 00:16:33.169 it really bothered me. And I didn't have answers for 308 00:16:33.389 --> 00:16:37.059 any of this. So Continuing to drink kind of helped 309 00:16:37.100 --> 00:16:40.070 me at least. It's weird to say that it helped me, 310 00:16:40.110 --> 00:16:43.450 but it helped me ignore those problems and to really 311 00:16:43.509 --> 00:16:45.730 just kind of like let all of my emotions just 312 00:16:45.830 --> 00:16:48.750 come out. And then over time, it got to a 313 00:16:48.789 --> 00:16:52.509 point where it was no longer even close to sustainable. 314 00:16:52.600 --> 00:16:55.620 And I realized that, wow, like I am now just 315 00:16:55.659 --> 00:16:59.559 going down this one road path towards or being in 316 00:16:59.580 --> 00:17:01.860 the throes of addiction and not really knowing how to 317 00:17:01.919 --> 00:17:05.329 emerge out of it. especially like I tried so hard 318 00:17:05.369 --> 00:17:06.890 to make sure it never got in the way of 319 00:17:06.950 --> 00:17:09.069 my work, but that was at the expense of the 320 00:17:09.130 --> 00:17:11.630 other human part of me that exists outside of work 321 00:17:11.670 --> 00:17:15.150 that was slowly deteriorating because it simply didn't make sense 322 00:17:15.630 --> 00:17:18.279 to not have

a lab partner around. And again, let 323 00:17:18.299 --> 00:17:21.019 alone figuring out all these new stages of my career 324 00:17:21.099 --> 00:17:25.460 on my own. So at that time, it took years 325 00:17:25.759 --> 00:17:28.759 of starting and stopping and starting and stopping. And I'm 326 00:17:28.779 --> 00:17:31.880 a combination of therapy. And then ultimately it actually took 327 00:17:32.299 --> 00:17:34.359 my childhood best friends and my wife to have an 328 00:17:34.420 --> 00:17:37.519 informal intervention. That was the thing that actually like very 329 00:17:37.559 --> 00:17:42.500 literally saved my life. And this was February 18th, 2021. 330 00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:45.940 And that was the day that the next day I joined, 331 00:17:46.119 --> 00:17:49.740 it's called Recovery Elevator. Cafe Ari is an online community 332 00:17:49.759 --> 00:17:52.640 of people trying to escape from drinking. 333 00:17:53.180 --> 00:17:54.089 That was. 334 00:17:54.900 --> 00:17:58.140 the thing that I needed more than anything and without 335 00:17:58.220 --> 00:18:02.019 even knowing, because the first day at the, at the 336 00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:06.400 meeting that we had, I was just like in awe 337 00:18:06.839 --> 00:18:09.640 that there were people there that were 20 or 77. 338 00:18:09.619 --> 00:18:15.230 And the common denominator was drinking was ruining our lives. And, um, 339 00:18:15.289 --> 00:18:18.009 I learned this saying that, you know, you either, you 340 00:18:18.049 --> 00:18:20.490 either keep on drinking and you give up everything or 341 00:18:20.529 --> 00:18:22.549 you give up drinking and you get to keep everything. Um, 342 00:18:22.920 --> 00:18:25.079 And it just became so crystal clear to me that 343 00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:26.829 I love my wife. 344 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:29.089 I love my best friends. I love my family. 345 00:18:29.109 --> 00:18:32.210 I do Cheesecake Factory Sundays with my parents every Sunday. 346 00:18:32.569 --> 00:18:35.069 I love the science that we're doing, despite now having 347 00:18:35.109 --> 00:18:37.309 to learn how to do it on my own. 348 00:18:37.349 --> 00:18:37.890 Quote unquote. 349 00:18:38.430 --> 00:18:42.200 And all of those pieces, I realized drinking was not 350 00:18:42.220 --> 00:18:44.900 going to solve any one of them. And stopping drinking 351 00:18:44.960 --> 00:18:46.619 was not going to solve any one of them. But 352 00:18:46.680 --> 00:18:49.000 stopping drinking would now give me the opportunity to be 353 00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:51.910 myself and a person again in a healthy state. that 354 00:18:51.950 --> 00:18:53.869 could help me tackle these problems. 355 00:18:53.750 --> 00:18:54.309 One by one. 356 00:18:55.089 --> 00:18:58.869 So that community was the thing that taught me that 357 00:18:58.990 --> 00:19:01.170 the other sayings, the opposite of addiction is connection. 358 00:19:01.650 --> 00:19:03.369 And that is true for the brain. 359 00:19:03.569 --> 00:19:06.549 And that is true for our social circles. And it's 360 00:19:06.630 --> 00:19:10.630 the community of loved ones and the community of people 361 00:19:10.670 --> 00:19:13.799 living in recovery that was the game changer to get 362 00:19:13.839 --> 00:19:17.380 my life back under control and to really then feel 363 00:19:17.400 --> 00:19:20.089 like a new sense of empowerment over What can I 364 00:19:20.130 --> 00:19:20.950 do as a person? 365 00:19:21.049 --> 00:19:22.869 And how do I honor someone's memory? 366 00:19:22.890 --> 00:19:25.309 Then that means like I had to really work on 367 00:19:25.349 --> 00:19:29.470 myself so that I could muscle forward, which thankfully was 368 00:19:29.509 --> 00:19:31.369 the case since 2021. 369 00:19:31.369 --> 00:19:33.910 That's so relatable because, I mean, if you think about 370 00:19:33.930 --> 00:19:36.490 the timing of that intervention, you're also in the thick 371 00:19:36.849 --> 00:19:38.089 of COVID. 372 00:19:38.849 --> 00:19:39.490 Yeah, right. 373 00:19:39.670 --> 00:19:42.819 And it was not just okay to drink. It was like, 374 00:19:42.819 --> 00:19:46.130 A joke, like, you know, everybody was was hooping it 375 00:19:46.269 --> 00:19:48.990 up and things because it was just a grief response, right? 376 00:19:49.059 --> 00:19:52.700 A collective global grief response because we didn't know what 377 00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:55.440 to do with ourselves. And so much had turned upside down. 378 00:19:55.500 --> 00:19:59.700 So much was disrupted and we, we had to reevaluate, 379 00:19:59.900 --> 00:20:01.680 you know, who we were, what we were doing, why 380 00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:07.480 we were doing it. I love that you found that, connection. 381 00:20:07.559 --> 00:20:10.160 I love that saying, you said, the opposite of addiction 382 00:20:10.180 --> 00:20:14.099 is connection. Because I've noticed in my own research that 383 00:20:14.700 --> 00:20:17.960 nobody changes alone. It's kind of a similar concept, right? 384 00:20:18.700 --> 00:20:24.809 So when you experience this loss of Shu, there's this 385 00:20:25.609 --> 00:20:28.390 almost like a twin. It makes me think about like 386 00:20:28.470 --> 00:20:32.150 twins who lose their twin, that deep of a feeling. 387 00:20:32.930 --> 00:20:36.809 And you're in this very academic heady environment having all 388 00:20:36.849 --> 00:20:42.009 these emotions and then you're avoiding those emotions or you're 389 00:20:42.089 --> 00:20:46.230 metering them with this substance, which so many people do, 390 00:20:46.730 --> 00:20:51.769 whether it's cannabis, alcohol, you know, you name it. And 391 00:20:52.470 --> 00:20:55.170 isn't that what we're trying to do in terms of 392 00:20:55.259 --> 00:20:59.279 our brain? We're trying to avoid a memory or we're 393 00:20:59.319 --> 00:21:03.759 trying to avoid a feeling. And One more thing about that, 394 00:21:04.180 --> 00:21:09.829 Antonio Damasio, who's one of my favorite old guy

neuroscientists, 395 00:21:09.890 --> 00:21:13.190 has had this posit of you can't really have a 396 00:21:13.589 --> 00:21:18.230 memory without an emotion attached to it. If you knock 397 00:21:18.349 --> 00:21:22.359 out the amygdala channel to the emotional centers or the 398 00:21:22.380 --> 00:21:28.279 emotional networks, then you can't really store a memory or, 399 00:21:28.380 --> 00:21:31.299 or maybe it's, maybe it's not a solid or something 400 00:21:31.339 --> 00:21:33.299 like that. So maybe, maybe unpack that a little bit. 401 00:21:34.359 --> 00:21:34.859 Yeah. 402 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.519 So it's funny you mentioned Antonio Damasio. I think the 403 00:21:38.559 --> 00:21:40.480 feeling of what happens is one of the books that 404 00:21:40.500 --> 00:21:44.109 got me into neuroscience and, you know, how was the 405 00:21:44.130 --> 00:21:45.369 brain conscious and things like that. 406 00:21:45.410 --> 00:21:47.009 I love it. I love it. Yeah. 407 00:21:47.450 --> 00:21:50.269 The, I think I'm to maybe to bring it full 408 00:21:50.309 --> 00:21:51.349 circle and unpack. 409 00:21:51.069 --> 00:21:54.750 Some of the neuro of it. There was after shoe. 410 00:21:54.589 --> 00:21:57.950 Pass, I saw this cartoon and the cartoon was, has 411 00:21:57.970 --> 00:22:00.380 a bubble and it has a bubble and it has 412 00:22:00.619 --> 00:22:02.460 the bubble in the middle is just grief. It has 413 00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:05.599 a larger bubble around grief and that larger bubble begins 414 00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:07.819 to grow and grow and grow and grief stays the 415 00:22:07.839 --> 00:22:11.910 same size. The idea there being that grief doesn't go 416 00:22:11.950 --> 00:22:14.809 away and that it's always something that we live with. 417 00:22:15.089 --> 00:22:16.609 I think of it, you know, kind. 418 00:22:16.490 --> 00:22:18.910 Of with for a little bit of levity, I think 419 00:22:18.950 --> 00:22:20.650 of it as like a 15 pound weight on our 420 00:22:20.670 --> 00:22:23.599 back that hurts at first to carry everywhere we go. 421 00:22:23.980 --> 00:22:25.990 But with the right With the right. 422 00:22:26.230 --> 00:22:30.910 Help, support, therapy, community, soul searching, we can have a 423 00:22:30.930 --> 00:22:33.430 better posture and muscle up a little bit over time 424 00:22:33.490 --> 00:22:35.839 and learn to carry that 15 pound weight. And then 425 00:22:35.880 --> 00:22:37.779 before you know it, you might even be able to 426 00:22:37.819 --> 00:22:39.839 train someone a bit or help them to carry that. 427 00:22:39.720 --> 00:22:40.619 15 pound weight. 428 00:22:41.180 --> 00:22:46.380 So the way that that circle grows is by building 429 00:22:46.619 --> 00:22:50.099 more memories in life and by having more experiences. And 430 00:22:50.119 --> 00:22:52.559 the point being that grief does not change and it's 431 00:22:52.599 --> 00:22:55.839 something that we carry with us together forever. But the 432 00:22:55.880

--> 00:22:58.960 life that we build around that grief can grow as 433 00:22:59.039 --> 00:23:01.920 much as we permit it to grow. And that's one 434 00:23:01.960 --> 00:23:05.609 way of helping to at least, in a sense, resolve 435 00:23:05.650 --> 00:23:07.869 some parts of that grief is by building a life 436 00:23:07.990 --> 00:23:08.890 full of more. 437 00:23:09.369 --> 00:23:11.029 Experiences and full of more memories. 438 00:23:11.329 --> 00:23:15.339 And for me, it was particularly meaningful because once I 439 00:23:16.359 --> 00:23:20.160 entered the recovery community and became sober and let go 440 00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:24.029 of alcohol and slowly started rebuilding my life, I realized, okay, 441 00:23:24.150 --> 00:23:27.049 I have to live life now such that all of 442 00:23:27.089 --> 00:23:30.109 the good moments are in high definition 4k and with 443 00:23:30.170 --> 00:23:32.650 sober eyes, but all of the bad moments are in 444 00:23:32.690 --> 00:23:35.680 high definition and in 4k and with sober eyes as well. 445 00:23:36.140 --> 00:23:38.539 The latter is what I had to really learn to 446 00:23:38.579 --> 00:23:40.640 live with, because that's the part that I had to 447 00:23:40.680 --> 00:23:42.460 learn to turn all of the feelings and thoughts that 448 00:23:42.500 --> 00:23:44.680 I had that didn't have any words or any, they 449 00:23:44.700 --> 00:23:48.319 felt like these amorphous blobs of blah, that as I 450 00:23:48.359 --> 00:23:51.690 began the process of writing the book, going through therapy, 451 00:23:51.750 --> 00:23:55.190 sobering up, those thoughts began to have words that I 452 00:23:55.210 --> 00:23:58.690 could use to attach to them and frame the thoughts. 453 00:23:58.819 --> 00:24:00.519 And now suddenly I had a little bit more of 454 00:24:00.599 --> 00:24:04.079 control over my sense of self. And then what would 455 00:24:04.119 --> 00:24:09.700 end up happening is that the feel-good memory folder we 456 00:24:09.759 --> 00:24:12.119 all have, I think, is how we build that circle 457 00:24:12.279 --> 00:24:15.900 around grief and continue to expand our lives. So things like, 458 00:24:16.369 --> 00:24:20.490 getting married, recording the audio book in studio with my parents, 459 00:24:20.829 --> 00:24:24.069 getting a puppy, like the really, the feel good moments 460 00:24:24.130 --> 00:24:27.990 that make life, I don't know, it's the good stuff 461 00:24:28.029 --> 00:24:33.170 in life, right? That I get to experience firsthand what 462 00:24:33.230 --> 00:24:36.250 it feels like to have that circle grow around grief. 463 00:24:36.309 --> 00:24:40.130 And that was all based in memory. And in particular, 464 00:24:40.509 --> 00:24:43.150 with positive memories, which was something that was very near 465 00:24:43.190 --> 00:24:45.700 and dear because that was the last project you and 466 00:24:45.740 --> 00:24:49.880 I worked on together was on artificially reactivating positive memories 467 00:24:50.259 --> 00:24:54.819 to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety and rodents. So it, 468 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:58.400 I realized that by, by building more and more of 469 00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:02.069 these positive experiences, whether it's through just living life and 470 00:25:02.109 --> 00:25:05.089 like sobering up and letting myself feel all of life 471 00:25:05.710 --> 00:25:08.230 or go intentionally going out of my way to build 472 00:25:08.269 --> 00:25:12.869 positive memories or experiences like gratitude journaling, traveling, doing the 473 00:25:12.910 --> 00:25:15.390 things that I'd wanted to do before that now suddenly 474 00:25:15.430 --> 00:25:17.849 I didn't really need permission for because I realized like, 475 00:25:18.430 --> 00:25:22.400 whose permission am I asking? Like life is, we're all 476 00:25:22.460 --> 00:25:26.140 on like the same ship here, right? So it weirdly 477 00:25:26.579 --> 00:25:30.329 helped me live my life more broadly, but in a 478 00:25:30.369 --> 00:25:32.829 way where I would end up forming more and more 479 00:25:32.910 --> 00:25:35.710 positive experiences that even today, just a few years out, 480 00:25:36.190 --> 00:25:38.809 I can think back on and lean on and say, like, man, 481 00:25:38.890 --> 00:25:41.670 that wouldn't have been possible had I kept drinking or 482 00:25:41.710 --> 00:25:44.809 that wouldn't have been possible had I not began to 483 00:25:44.849 --> 00:25:47.619 at least understand what loss and grief means to me 484 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:50.420 and what parts I'm scared of and what parts I 485 00:25:50.900 --> 00:25:53.200 sort of can squint at and have a rough idea 486 00:25:53.240 --> 00:25:57.119 of some acceptance of the fragility of life and so on. 487 00:25:57.480 --> 00:26:00.309 But to me, the beautiful part was that it's all 488 00:26:00.369 --> 00:26:03.049 based in memory because all of the experiences that we 489 00:26:03.109 --> 00:26:06.730 have leave a measurable change in the brain the same 490 00:26:06.769 --> 00:26:09.339 way that losing someone leaves a measurable change in the brain. 491 00:26:09.710 --> 00:26:10.269 And I felt a. 492 00:26:10.359 --> 00:26:13.259 Little bit more in control knowing that I can be 493 00:26:13.299 --> 00:26:16.380 the one steering my own ship in the direction of growth. 494 00:26:17.720 --> 00:26:21.059 As uncomfortable as growth is, it was the most necessary thing. 495 00:26:21.420 --> 00:26:23.420 And I think that the fuel for that growth was 496 00:26:23.500 --> 00:26:27.210 thankfully the positive experiences that I had come my way 497 00:26:27.430 --> 00:26:28.730 during those intervening years. 498 00:26:28.789 --> 00:26:29.769 And even now for that matter. 499 00:26:30.430 --> 00:26:33.869 Good on you for taking that road eventually. And also 500 00:26:33.910 --> 00:26:38.319 for your loved ones for, intervening, you know, time where 501 00:26:38.359 --> 00:26:40.359 you were, you know, the thing

that really stuck out 502 00:26:40.380 --> 00:26:43.859 to me there is that through therapy, you were able 503 00:26:43.940 --> 00:26:47.099 to have a language that you didn't have before. The 504 00:26:47.259 --> 00:26:50.519 language was the drink, you know, I don't know what 505 00:26:50.559 --> 00:26:54.220 I'm feeling. I can't locate within my own mind what 506 00:26:54.279 --> 00:26:58.109 this swirl of memory and thought and emotion is. And 507 00:26:58.180 --> 00:27:01.309 so the alcohol allowed you to kind of be more 508 00:27:01.549 --> 00:27:05.009 open to it. Now let's talk about the more extreme things. 509 00:27:05.339 --> 00:27:07.559 version of that that I think about, not from an 510 00:27:07.619 --> 00:27:12.640 addiction perspective, but from a therapeutic perspective, is things like 511 00:27:12.779 --> 00:27:20.589 psychedelic-assisted therapy, where ketamine, which is a dissociative or psilocybin, 512 00:27:21.849 --> 00:27:27.509 allows somebody, MDMA, allows somebody to approach something that is 513 00:27:27.589 --> 00:27:31.789 kind of this hotspot in their memory and work with 514 00:27:31.849 --> 00:27:36.920 those memories that otherwise in the sober sense would be 515 00:27:37.019 --> 00:27:41.650 too hot to handle, too overwhelming for the circuits, right? 516 00:27:41.690 --> 00:27:46.349 For the nervous system. And so how does memory and 517 00:27:46.710 --> 00:27:51.259 working those memories and this kind of psychedelic process, which 518 00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:55.500 has been found to be very neuroplastic, you know, and 519 00:27:55.539 --> 00:27:58.440 we should just call it that the brain is very 520 00:27:58.500 --> 00:28:03.609 dynamic and very plastic, right? So if anybody thinks that anybody... 521 00:28:03.799 --> 00:28:07.509 watching this thinks that they, it's over for them. I 522 00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:10.650 argue that, you know, we're constantly changing. It's just a 523 00:28:10.670 --> 00:28:12.609 matter of like, where do you want to change to, 524 00:28:12.910 --> 00:28:17.130 you know? And, and, and this, this amazing response that 525 00:28:17.150 --> 00:28:20.950 you had of like almost buffering all of that pain 526 00:28:21.380 --> 00:28:27.779 of losing shoe with positive experiences and, and love and 527 00:28:28.119 --> 00:28:33.089 joy and awe, right. And, and gratitude. So going back 528 00:28:33.140 --> 00:28:36.259 to the, the psychedelic assistant, like, you know, what do 529 00:28:36.279 --> 00:28:39.480 you think about these kind of hot, too hot to 530 00:28:39.559 --> 00:28:43.680 touch memories? And what are your thoughts as a scientist 531 00:28:44.180 --> 00:28:46.839 about how we could get there where it could be 532 00:28:48.619 --> 00:28:52.529 safe to handle without going through the ethic that you 533 00:28:52.549 --> 00:28:55.930 were talking about before of in your book of like, 534 00:28:56.230 --> 00:28:59.869 you know, the, the endless sunshine of the spotless mind.

535 00:28:59.910 --> 00:29:01.329 Is that what the movie was called? Yeah. 536 00:29:02.890 --> 00:29:03.349 Yeah. 537 00:29:03.390 --> 00:29:03.589 Yeah. 538 00:29:03.609 --> 00:29:03.750 Yeah. 539 00:29:03.829 --> 00:29:04.190 Eternal. 540 00:29:04.210 --> 00:29:06.390 Yeah. I actually cried at that movie. I think, I 541 00:29:06.430 --> 00:29:08.410 think it should be, you know, required watching for all 542 00:29:08.430 --> 00:29:12.220 high school students because it is this, this dilemma of 543 00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:16.339 what makes us is all of our emotions, all of 544 00:29:16.519 --> 00:29:21.400 our rich experience, all of our losses, all of our overcomings, 545 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:25.329 you know, all of our, uh, you know, dysfunctions, all 546 00:29:25.349 --> 00:29:27.210 of our periods where we didn't know what to do. 547 00:29:27.269 --> 00:29:29.930 We got lost. We were alone. Um, All that kind 548 00:29:29.970 --> 00:29:32.710 of stuff is so rich that the ethic you bring 549 00:29:32.710 --> 00:29:35.230 up in the book of, you know, is it ethical 550 00:29:35.230 --> 00:29:38.640 to delete all these things? Whereas I think that the 551 00:29:38.640 --> 00:29:44.490 psychedelic assisted therapy allows us to not forget the memory, 552 00:29:44.509 --> 00:29:48.650 but maybe lean into the fact that as you have discovered, 553 00:29:49.279 --> 00:29:52.480 memories are plastic and they constantly mutate, right? So just 554 00:29:52.539 --> 00:29:53.079 take it from there. 555 00:29:53.839 --> 00:29:56.940 Yeah, that's exactly how I think of memory, which is 556 00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:00.539 that it's... It's like the saying that you can't step 557 00:30:00.579 --> 00:30:02.720 in the same river twice. And I think of memory 558 00:30:02.779 --> 00:30:07.069 that way, that we can't recall the exact same memory twice, 559 00:30:07.289 --> 00:30:10.470 even though it feels that way. And it's because when 560 00:30:10.509 --> 00:30:13.130 we recall a memory, I mean, I think it's kind 561 00:30:13.170 --> 00:30:16.190 of popular knowledge now that memories are reconstructions of the 562 00:30:16.230 --> 00:30:19.089 past and that they're not like videos or iPhone videos 563 00:30:19.130 --> 00:30:21.549 of the past for that matter. But we can go 564 00:30:21.589 --> 00:30:24.519 a step further that every time we recall a memory 565 00:30:24.539 --> 00:30:26.720 that It's kind of like hitting save as on a 566 00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:29.710 Microsoft Word file. But we have the choice of what 567 00:30:29.750 --> 00:30:32.549 we want to edit into that save as file. Like 568 00:30:32.609 --> 00:30:34.710 we have the choice of do we want to delete 569 00:30:34.750 --> 00:30:37.069 some lines? Do we want to scribble in some new 570 00:30:37.109 --> 00:30:39.089 words or some new paragraphs? And I think that with 571 00:30:39.109 --> 00:30:43.630 psychedelic assisted therapy, what it does is it potentially opens 572 00:30:43.779 --> 00:30:46.259 up the file a bit longer so that we have 573 00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:48.319 more of a time to go in and write in 574 00:30:48.500 --> 00:30:52.180 or edit out the details that we think are problematic. 575 00:30:52.940 --> 00:30:55.180 So I think of it this way that When we 576 00:30:55.240 --> 00:30:59.430 recall a memory, we know it's susceptible to modification and 577 00:30:59.450 --> 00:31:03.009 that sometimes we're inadvertently updating it depending on our mood 578 00:31:03.049 --> 00:31:05.369 and depending on what we're doing and thinking and so on. 579 00:31:06.009 --> 00:31:09.519 But we can be intentional about it, such as in 580 00:31:09.730 --> 00:31:12.880 the clinic and say, well, if we're recalling a memory, 581 00:31:13.339 --> 00:31:16.339 I think it's about 80% of people would not want 582 00:31:16.400 --> 00:31:19.779 a memory erased or just full blown erased by any means. 583 00:31:20.289 --> 00:31:23.869 But if we could somehow just chisel out the debilitating, 584 00:31:23.930 --> 00:31:28.170 gut-wrenching emotional component, then that number goes up a bit 585 00:31:28.230 --> 00:31:30.390 that some people would say, I don't want to get 586 00:31:30.450 --> 00:31:34.660 rid of the entire memory of something traumatic. It's the 587 00:31:34.700 --> 00:31:37.380 debilitating feeling of when I think about it, I can't 588 00:31:37.400 --> 00:31:43.680 think about it anymore because suddenly you're impaired, whether it's socially, internally, both. 589 00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:47.039 So I think of it that with psychedelic-assisted therapy, if 590 00:31:47.369 --> 00:31:50.650 and therapies that are effective for that matter in general, 591 00:31:51.049 --> 00:31:54.690 what we're doing is we can keep that file open 592 00:31:54.730 --> 00:31:57.640 a bit longer to edit in or edit out details 593 00:31:58.220 --> 00:32:01.279 and take advantage of how plastic memories really are and 594 00:32:01.339 --> 00:32:04.599 how malleable they really are so that we can change 595 00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:08.809 them in some direction that we find healthy. And I 596 00:32:08.849 --> 00:32:11.059 think that to get to the ethics part, I think 597 00:32:11.079 --> 00:32:13.380 that's probably the most important thing that we can do 598 00:32:13.480 --> 00:32:16.339 up front is we got to give ourselves an ethically 599 00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:19.940 bounded goal of why we want to manipulate memories. Because 600 00:32:20.349 --> 00:32:24.099 we could manipulate memories in the form of You get 601 00:32:24.140 --> 00:32:28.200 a two second ad on social media and then two 602 00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:31.180 weeks later you're buying the shoes, right? It's like we 603 00:32:31.720 --> 00:32:34.680 know through psychology and marketing how that works. That has 604 00:32:34.700 --> 00:32:37.880 the unfortunate byproduct of trying to change your mind for 605 00:32:37.940 --> 00:32:41.700 the sake of making someone else's bottom line

thicker, right? 606 00:32:42.039 --> 00:32:45.339 Whereas if we have the ethically bounded goal of let's 607 00:32:45.480 --> 00:32:49.960 alter a memory that is debilitating us in some clinically 608 00:32:50.059 --> 00:32:53.720 meaningful way, then if we can edit that memory or 609 00:32:53.839 --> 00:32:58.160 edit out the gut-wrenching, debilitating feelings while keeping that memory intact, 610 00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:01.480 then we have the goal of restoring health and wellbeing 611 00:33:01.539 --> 00:33:04.859 back to the organism or to the individual in mind. 612 00:33:05.319 --> 00:33:07.819 So that way we're manipulating memories for the sake of 613 00:33:07.880 --> 00:33:12.839 restoring health and wellbeing and not necessarily for more sinister 614 00:33:13.000 --> 00:33:18.349 reasons that memory manipulation just is loaded with sinister connotation. 615 00:33:18.670 --> 00:33:22.430 So I think it's important to confront that upfront and 616 00:33:22.549 --> 00:33:25.670 give ourselves a set of ethics for why we're studying 617 00:33:25.730 --> 00:33:29.819 what we're studying. And it's to try to benefit humanity 618 00:33:29.839 --> 00:33:31.319 for the sake of our health and well-being. 619 00:33:31.339 --> 00:33:35.339 You know, there's so many things that just shot off 620 00:33:35.380 --> 00:33:40.400 in my mind, like to follow the trails there. That, 621 00:33:41.039 --> 00:33:42.960 I think where I'm going to go with is, is 622 00:33:43.019 --> 00:33:45.940 it true? So just tell me myth or fact, okay? 623 00:33:46.500 --> 00:33:50.380 Is it true that if I access a memory of 624 00:33:50.440 --> 00:33:54.470 my childhood, You know, I had a memory of drowning 625 00:33:54.809 --> 00:33:57.950 when I was four and I flipped backwards into a 626 00:33:58.009 --> 00:34:01.630 pool and my parents were inside, you know, yucking it 627 00:34:01.650 --> 00:34:05.400 up with their friends. And I really, I remember like 628 00:34:05.460 --> 00:34:08.760 seeing the water surface and seeing myself sink because the 629 00:34:08.880 --> 00:34:10.019 chair was pinning me down. 630 00:34:10.039 --> 00:34:11.360 Oh, wow. 631 00:34:11.739 --> 00:34:14.480 And then I don't know what happened. And then I 632 00:34:14.539 --> 00:34:18.409 woke up, you know, poolside and apparently I kind of 633 00:34:18.449 --> 00:34:20.769 like died and came back in that moment, but I 634 00:34:20.809 --> 00:34:27.360 don't really recall it. In that kind of memory bank, 635 00:34:27.820 --> 00:34:31.519 when I tell you this right now, or I think 636 00:34:31.579 --> 00:34:34.719 about it five years ago, or I tell a therapist, whoever, 637 00:34:35.300 --> 00:34:38.329 is it mutating in this conscious way, like you were 638 00:34:38.369 --> 00:34:42.489 talking about with the Word doc, where I'm deliberately mutating 639 00:34:42.550 --> 00:34:45.849 it for the better? Or is it also true that 640 00:34:46.440 --> 00:34:48.659 The brain is kind of, you know, anytime

you check 641 00:34:48.719 --> 00:34:50.599 out the book from the library, it's a different book. 642 00:34:50.780 --> 00:34:55.090 You know, it slightly mutates regardless of whether we intend 643 00:34:55.130 --> 00:34:56.829 it to. Like, which of those is true? 644 00:34:57.630 --> 00:35:01.230 I think the latter, that every time that we recall 645 00:35:01.289 --> 00:35:06.239 a memory, bits and pieces change that usually are inconsequential. 646 00:35:07.480 --> 00:35:09.920 They become consequential, of course, you know, when we're using 647 00:35:09.960 --> 00:35:13.320 them for things that require facts to be facts, like 648 00:35:13.340 --> 00:35:15.230 in the court of law or things like that. But 649 00:35:15.250 --> 00:35:18.190 for our personal, for our lived experience, my guess is 650 00:35:18.210 --> 00:35:22.550 that like the majority of those memories are probably largely intact. 651 00:35:22.590 --> 00:35:24.949 And there's bits and pieces that change and warp over 652 00:35:24.989 --> 00:35:28.050 time as we recall them, like whether it's the different 653 00:35:28.090 --> 00:35:30.280 point of view that you see the water from or 654 00:35:30.300 --> 00:35:31.710 the hue or the color. 655 00:35:31.489 --> 00:35:33.579 Or where the memory begins and ends. 656 00:35:33.619 --> 00:35:37.219 Like it's the the tough part there is how much 657 00:35:37.260 --> 00:35:40.420 of the experience was really encoded and how much of 658 00:35:40.519 --> 00:35:45.519 it really exists in your brain somewhere. inaccessible for whichever reasons, 659 00:35:46.099 --> 00:35:48.239 or how much of it was just not encoded at all, 660 00:35:48.599 --> 00:35:53.360 because a very big traumatic event happened at the time 661 00:35:53.389 --> 00:35:57.409 of that experience happening. So I think about it in 662 00:35:57.469 --> 00:36:03.429 terms of, we change memories every single time we recall them. Subconsciously, 663 00:36:03.449 --> 00:36:06.230 it just happens. This is just what memories do. One 664 00:36:06.250 --> 00:36:10.289 theory out there is that it's not so much because 665 00:36:10.489 --> 00:36:13.590 our brain is trying to rewrite the past or anything 666 00:36:13.630 --> 00:36:16.769 like that, but it's because it turns out that the 667 00:36:16.809 --> 00:36:19.090 same brain areas that we use to recall the past, 668 00:36:19.510 --> 00:36:23.949 we also use accidentally to make false memories. But we 669 00:36:24.030 --> 00:36:27.510 also use that area, like the hippocampus, to imagine ourselves 670 00:36:27.570 --> 00:36:30.820 in the future. And that area is also active when 671 00:36:30.840 --> 00:36:33.780 we're dreaming, for that matter. So one theory out there 672 00:36:34.219 --> 00:36:39.000 is that our memories are our brain's best prediction of 673 00:36:39.079 --> 00:36:42.699 what happened. So because it's the brain's best prediction of 674 00:36:42.760 --> 00:36:46.239 what happened, predictions change all the time. So

there's going 675 00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:48.219 to be little bits of, wait, what about this detail? 676 00:36:48.260 --> 00:36:50.619 Maybe that's more accurate. Or wait, no, I think I 677 00:36:50.659 --> 00:36:53.219 remember it this way. Maybe that's more accurate. So our 678 00:36:53.260 --> 00:36:55.079 brain is trying to stay a step ahead of the 679 00:36:55.119 --> 00:36:57.949 present all the time to avoid getting eaten, that kind 680 00:36:57.989 --> 00:37:01.269 of thing. So if we're doing that and constantly making 681 00:37:02.079 --> 00:37:05.679 predictions of what we think happened, that can at least 682 00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:08.710 begin to explain why we're prone to certain memory errors, 683 00:37:09.090 --> 00:37:12.170 why things like false memories may exist. But also it 684 00:37:12.190 --> 00:37:15.369 may be that we have memory so that we can 685 00:37:15.429 --> 00:37:18.860 imagine the future. And we have imagination because we have 686 00:37:18.940 --> 00:37:21.380 memories of the past. So this, I think, is a 687 00:37:21.400 --> 00:37:25.079 kind of beautiful theory that it says it's really that 688 00:37:25.139 --> 00:37:28.730 the brain uses memories so that it can make predictions 689 00:37:28.969 --> 00:37:32.030 to enable its own future and enable its own livelihood. 690 00:37:32.050 --> 00:37:35.730 And I'm really privy to that theory because then it's, 691 00:37:36.110 --> 00:37:38.469 it's kind of agnostic about whether you're thinking about the 692 00:37:38.510 --> 00:37:41.909 past or thinking about the future. Just our experiences, our 693 00:37:41.949 --> 00:37:45.510 memories are our building blocks that we use to combine 694 00:37:45.550 --> 00:37:48.650 and recombine in our brain, whether it's to dream or 695 00:37:48.710 --> 00:37:52.809 literally to imagine a different future. And I think that's 696 00:37:52.829 --> 00:37:55.170 a very, like, I don't know if it's uniquely human, 697 00:37:55.230 --> 00:37:58.289 but I think it's a profound faculty that we have. 698 00:37:59.469 --> 00:38:02.550 I like that you're bringing in the prediction aspect of 699 00:38:02.590 --> 00:38:06.980 the brain. And you talk about engrams, which I was 700 00:38:07.019 --> 00:38:09.159 ignorant to the idea of that. Is it kind of 701 00:38:09.179 --> 00:38:12.199 just like a neural network where it's all these different 702 00:38:12.679 --> 00:38:16.949 harmonious or symphony type of areas of the brain? Because 703 00:38:17.329 --> 00:38:20.869 for those of you who don't know, and you're more 704 00:38:20.929 --> 00:38:26.170 focused on one area or one little spot within the brain, 705 00:38:27.150 --> 00:38:31.130 the current thinking is that there's this whole concert going on, right? 706 00:38:32.150 --> 00:38:34.639 It's not just this one even though you can localize 707 00:38:34.679 --> 00:38:37.909 a lot of activity to this particular thing under this circumstance, 708 00:38:38.590 --> 00:38:41.210 that the modern way of thinking about neuroscience is that 709 00:38:41.250 --> 00:38:44.670 the whole brain is like playing chords, not individual notes, right? 710 00:38:45.429 --> 00:38:48.030 So that's called an engram. Am I tracking? Is that 711 00:38:48.360 --> 00:38:50.000 an okay way to explain that? 712 00:38:50.579 --> 00:38:53.519 Yeah, that we think of an engram as the physical 713 00:38:53.559 --> 00:38:57.699 manifestation of memory in the brain. So engrams are the 714 00:38:57.739 --> 00:39:01.219 physical manifestation of memory in the brain, and that can... 715 00:39:01.909 --> 00:39:05.599 cover everything from all of the changes that happen at 716 00:39:05.639 --> 00:39:08.800 the genetic level, at the level of individual brain cells, 717 00:39:09.280 --> 00:39:12.900 at the architecture of brain cells, at thousands of brain 718 00:39:12.920 --> 00:39:15.880 cells firing in very particular patterns with each other to 719 00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:19.679 produce the symphony that is memory, and so on. And 720 00:39:19.780 --> 00:39:22.570 we think, as you mentioned, that we think of engrams 721 00:39:23.269 --> 00:39:27.809 as a 3D web of activity that exists in the brain. 722 00:39:27.909 --> 00:39:29.489 So it's not live. 723 00:39:30.280 --> 00:39:32.480 Eternal sunshine in this case, where you can go into 724 00:39:32.599 --> 00:39:34.980 one point of the brain and say, that's where the 725 00:39:35.019 --> 00:39:36.760 memory is located, let's zap it. 726 00:39:37.260 --> 00:39:39.860 It's more of a 3D spider web of. 727 00:39:39.940 --> 00:39:43.409 Activity that recruits the entirety of the brain, because every 728 00:39:43.449 --> 00:39:47.449 memory has its associated sights and sounds and smells and emotions, 729 00:39:47.849 --> 00:39:49.710 and those are the going to recruit. the parts of 730 00:39:49.750 --> 00:39:52.010 the brain that are involved in processing sights and sounds 731 00:39:52.070 --> 00:39:55.369 and smells and emotions. So I like the symphony example 732 00:39:55.429 --> 00:39:58.409 because it means that all of our brain cells are 733 00:39:58.489 --> 00:40:03.280 different kinds of instruments that when tuned together can play 734 00:40:03.599 --> 00:40:07.139 and produce seemingly magical things like consciousness or our ability 735 00:40:07.179 --> 00:40:10.900 to recollect the past. And then when some of those 736 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:14.099 instruments are out of tune, we start noticing some of 737 00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:19.050 these impairments that may accompany, for example, a neurodegenerative disorder 738 00:40:19.110 --> 00:40:19.630 or so on. 739 00:40:21.409 --> 00:40:24.530 So let's just establish that, you know, our memories are 740 00:40:24.630 --> 00:40:29.420 kind of the bank of our identity, right? You know, 741 00:40:30.039 --> 00:40:32.519 if we don't have memories, what happens to somebody who 742 00:40:32.559 --> 00:40:36.280 doesn't have any memories? Is that possible? Because you talk 743

00:40:36.320 --> 00:40:38.659 about in the book that even if you knock out 744 00:40:38.739 --> 00:40:42.050 the hippocampus on both sides of the brain, that the 745 00:40:42.090 --> 00:40:45.010 cortex is kind of the long-term storage. For those of 746 00:40:45.030 --> 00:40:48.130 you who have seen Inside Out, it's the long-term memory 747 00:40:48.150 --> 00:40:53.539 and all those stacks of balls or whatever with the 748 00:40:53.619 --> 00:40:56.280 net net of all the different emotions that those were 749 00:40:56.320 --> 00:41:02.679 stored under, right? And if your cortex is holding everything anyway, 750 00:41:04.099 --> 00:41:06.570 is it always true that even if you knock out 751 00:41:06.619 --> 00:41:09.789 the hippocampus that you have a sense of self? And 752 00:41:09.829 --> 00:41:14.769 is that sense of self illusory or perceptual? Like, you know, 753 00:41:14.789 --> 00:41:19.769 in Buddhism, there's so much focus on you know observing 754 00:41:19.809 --> 00:41:23.889 the mind right and so from an experiential perspective that 755 00:41:23.929 --> 00:41:27.389 whole body of work has a lot of parallels to 756 00:41:27.409 --> 00:41:33.190 the wet lab of neuroscience in today's time and it 757 00:41:33.230 --> 00:41:35.570 makes me curious like you know do they have it 758 00:41:35.650 --> 00:41:38.949 right that it's all just a perception of who we 759 00:41:39.010 --> 00:41:41.190 are especially if you take into account the level of 760 00:41:41.489 --> 00:41:45.969 mutation of each recalled memory and so like How do 761 00:41:45.989 --> 00:41:47.809 we not just go, oh my gosh, I have no 762 00:41:47.869 --> 00:41:51.690 idea who I am. And it's all kind of like 763 00:41:52.550 --> 00:41:53.889 a house of cards, right? 764 00:41:54.349 --> 00:41:57.469 The Buddhism example makes me think of this study from 765 00:41:57.550 --> 00:42:01.699 way back when that claimed that every decade or so, 766 00:42:01.860 --> 00:42:04.500 all of the atoms in our body turn over. So 767 00:42:04.739 --> 00:42:08.139 supposedly all of the atoms that make me today are 768 00:42:08.519 --> 00:42:11.119 different than from 10 years ago, than from 20 years ago, 769 00:42:11.179 --> 00:42:13.480 than from 30 years ago. So am I the same 770 00:42:13.539 --> 00:42:15.219 Steve as I was when I was five years old? 771 00:42:15.619 --> 00:42:17.829 or 15, or 25, or so on and so forth. 772 00:42:18.349 --> 00:42:21.989 And I guess I have two responses, and I don't 773 00:42:22.010 --> 00:42:24.510 know that I'm personally satisfied with either, but one of 774 00:42:24.550 --> 00:42:26.829 them is, yeah, I think of memory as the thing 775 00:42:26.849 --> 00:42:29.840 that threads and unifies our overall sense of being, and 776 00:42:29.860 --> 00:42:32.500 that whenever we have damage to areas like the hippocampus, 777 00:42:33.300 --> 00:42:36.519 our ability to thread that sense of being over time, 778 00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:38.800 it's not that it's totally wiped out, but it is 779 00:42:38.840 --> 00:42:42.949 dramatically impaired. So for instance, people living with hippocampal damage 780 00:42:43.550 --> 00:42:49.110 often may have very different kinds of dreams or impairments 781 00:42:49.150 --> 00:42:52.250 in even imagining themselves in the future for that matter. 782 00:42:52.650 --> 00:42:54.750 So some of these fundamental properties that we think the 783 00:42:54.789 --> 00:42:59.800 hippocampus is important for, recalling the past, reconstructing narratives, projecting 784 00:42:59.840 --> 00:43:04.480 ourselves into the future. But there are, I think, still 785 00:43:04.760 --> 00:43:08.579 many memories that survive hippocampal damage, and the field is 786 00:43:08.599 --> 00:43:12.800 still wrestling with how and why and how much How 787 00:43:12.840 --> 00:43:15.719 much conscious detail of those memories do we truly have 788 00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:19.579 access to without a hippocampus? And it's a bit controversial 789 00:43:19.900 --> 00:43:24.199 because one claim is that we might remember a lot 790 00:43:24.239 --> 00:43:27.489 of detail, but because areas like the hippocampus are impaired, 791 00:43:27.909 --> 00:43:31.969 our ability to really relive those memories from our first-person 792 00:43:32.030 --> 00:43:35.230 point of view, that that sense of self is what 793 00:43:35.269 --> 00:43:38.210 may become impaired when we have hippocampal damage. 794 00:43:38.630 --> 00:43:40.670 And maybe on the broader picture, the. 795 00:43:40.630 --> 00:43:43.630 Way I think about this is that I think of 796 00:43:43.690 --> 00:43:46.250 memories as the building blocks that we use to build 797 00:43:46.309 --> 00:43:49.380 today and project ourselves into the future. And that those 798 00:43:49.409 --> 00:43:53.260 kinds of building blocks are it's a mystery today, in 799 00:43:53.300 --> 00:43:56.960 my opinion, what the true building blocks of memory are, 800 00:43:57.280 --> 00:44:00.619 because we know, for instance, that like DNA is to 801 00:44:00.699 --> 00:44:05.260 life as what is to memory. So what is the 802 00:44:05.320 --> 00:44:08.400 DNA of memory? I think that it kind of will 803 00:44:08.420 --> 00:44:12.199 probably depend on who you ask nowadays, but we'll get there, right? 804 00:44:12.219 --> 00:44:14.739 It doesn't break any law of physics. I think it's 805 00:44:14.780 --> 00:44:17.619 just that it's tipping our cap to the fact that 806 00:44:17.699 --> 00:44:21.289 we have one lifetime to try to reverse engineer what 807 00:44:21.789 --> 00:44:24.869 evolution had four billion years on Earth to produce. So 808 00:44:24.889 --> 00:44:27.570 there's definitely going to be some curveballs still in the making. 809 00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:32.599 I think is definitely the greatest area of mystery that 810 00:44:32.699 --> 00:44:36.719 we have, right? And a couple other huge pockets in science, 811 00:44:36.760 --> 00:44:41.110 at least. So is it that people

without hippocampi, the 812 00:44:41.150 --> 00:44:45.929 plural of hippocampus, is it that those people don't evolve 813 00:44:46.289 --> 00:44:49.289 their sense of self? Is it locked somehow in time 814 00:44:49.309 --> 00:44:54.380 associated with the date of the loss of those areas 815 00:44:54.420 --> 00:44:54.739 of the brain? 816 00:44:55.420 --> 00:44:58.119 I think it depends on the extent of the hippocampal damage, 817 00:44:58.159 --> 00:45:01.869 since there's no two damages of the brain ever really 818 00:45:01.909 --> 00:45:02.429 look alike. 819 00:45:02.969 --> 00:45:03.610 Yeah. 820 00:45:03.650 --> 00:45:07.510 So my understanding of it is that it's our ability 821 00:45:07.610 --> 00:45:11.110 to mentally time travel back to the past or imagine 822 00:45:11.150 --> 00:45:14.050 ourselves in the future, that our ability to put ourselves 823 00:45:14.110 --> 00:45:17.449 from that first person point of view that can experience 824 00:45:17.639 --> 00:45:21.820 an episode of our lives, that that's what becomes impaired. 825 00:45:22.199 --> 00:45:24.940 But I do think there's still very much a sense 826 00:45:24.980 --> 00:45:28.429 of self that's evolving. It's evolving differently and it's evolving 827 00:45:28.469 --> 00:45:33.289 without some of the crucial building blocks of hippocampal based memories. 828 00:45:32.909 --> 00:45:33.449 That we need. 829 00:45:34.030 --> 00:45:37.750 But there is, I think, a lot of reason for 830 00:45:38.050 --> 00:45:41.090 hope and it's very, it's down to the science even. 831 00:45:41.409 --> 00:45:45.469 So for instance, with memory loss, I think is a 832 00:45:45.489 --> 00:45:49.139 good example of this, where in different cases of amnesia, 833 00:45:49.590 --> 00:45:59.710 So whether it's Alzheimer's, neurodegenerative disorder, addiction-related amnesia, sleep deprivation-induced amnesia, 834 00:46:00.010 --> 00:46:02.110 or even the one amnesia we all share, which is 835 00:46:02.210 --> 00:46:05.510 infantile amnesia, our inability to remember what we did before 836 00:46:05.550 --> 00:46:08.300 we were three more or less. that in every single 837 00:46:08.440 --> 00:46:11.320 one of those cases, our field has been able to 838 00:46:11.460 --> 00:46:14.389 artificially restore the memory that was thought to be lost. 839 00:46:14.869 --> 00:46:20.230 So that to me says maybe in Alzheimer's, in sleep deprivation, 840 00:46:20.329 --> 00:46:24.949 in addiction, in infantile amnesia, maybe the library of memories 841 00:46:25.030 --> 00:46:28.159 may still be intact, but the librarian is on strike now. 842 00:46:28.519 --> 00:46:31.219 So we need to figure out a way to reintroduce 843 00:46:31.260 --> 00:46:34.219 a new librarian to reaccess the memories that were thought 844 00:46:34.239 --> 00:46:37.469 to be lost and so long as the library, the 845 00:46:37.489 --> 00:46:41.150 brain is intact. And that to me has been like 846 00:46:41.170 --> 00:46:44.469 a big reason for hope that

in almost every case, 847 00:46:44.530 --> 00:46:47.610 including traumatic brain injury recently, that in almost every case 848 00:46:48.150 --> 00:46:51.610 we can think of, memories are actually a bit more 849 00:46:51.670 --> 00:46:55.489 notoriously difficult to break than we previously thought. But the 850 00:46:55.530 --> 00:46:58.969 part that is easier to break is the accessibility of 851 00:46:59.030 --> 00:47:05.039 those memories. And that's what we think is underpinning some 852 00:47:05.079 --> 00:47:08.820 of these disorders or our inability to recall certain memories 853 00:47:09.199 --> 00:47:11.469 is because we may have lost the machinery we need 854 00:47:11.489 --> 00:47:12.670 to access those memories. 855 00:47:14.010 --> 00:47:18.349 So just to unpack that, um, the, the librarian or 856 00:47:18.409 --> 00:47:21.769 the machine to access the memories is, is the hippocampus 857 00:47:21.829 --> 00:47:26.300 in that case. And, uh, hippocampal damage can be, you know, 858 00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:29.619 N of one, you know, each person is different. And 859 00:47:29.679 --> 00:47:32.900 so you don't, we don't really know because those aren't repeatable, uh, 860 00:47:34.230 --> 00:47:40.199 lesions or damages, that we don't really know how much 861 00:47:40.679 --> 00:47:44.119 this is affecting the library versus just the library and 862 00:47:44.159 --> 00:47:46.340 getting the books, that kind of thing. But it seems 863 00:47:46.420 --> 00:47:48.719 like on the other side of that damage that the 864 00:47:48.760 --> 00:47:52.219 library is intact. And is it true to say that 865 00:47:52.260 --> 00:47:55.789 the library is kind of akin to, in psychology, the 866 00:47:55.869 --> 00:47:58.369 idea of implicit memory? system? 867 00:47:58.849 --> 00:48:01.170 It can, a lot of our memories, yeah, can exist 868 00:48:01.230 --> 00:48:03.829 in like as implicit memory systems where most of our 869 00:48:03.869 --> 00:48:07.269 memories are dormant right now. Like I, we usually think 870 00:48:07.309 --> 00:48:10.519 of it one memory per memory kind of thing, and 871 00:48:10.539 --> 00:48:12.519 that the majority of the memories that we have in 872 00:48:12.559 --> 00:48:15.320 our brain right now are silent or dormant and not 873 00:48:15.380 --> 00:48:16.400 necessarily active. 874 00:48:16.840 --> 00:48:19.139 So we can either restore. 875 00:48:18.679 --> 00:48:22.019 The librarian by trying to come up with different therapeutic 876 00:48:22.780 --> 00:48:28.389 interventions that help out the hippocampus, or if we're working 877 00:48:28.429 --> 00:48:32.349 with mice in particular, we can be the new librarian 878 00:48:32.449 --> 00:48:34.610 because we can find the cells that hold onto these 879 00:48:34.670 --> 00:48:38.610 memories and turn on only those cells to only turn 880 00:48:38.670 --> 00:48:41.010 on that memory. And there's actually some studies out there 881 00:48:41.050 --> 00:48:44.619 showing that you can track memories throughout the brain. And 882 00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:47.519 even if you get rid of the hippocampus, you can 883 00:48:47.619 --> 00:48:49.900 go to other parts of the brain and then still 884 00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:53.260 get that memory back. So it's almost like maybe there's 885 00:48:53.300 --> 00:48:56.639 multiple traces of a memory that exists in the brain. 886 00:48:57.050 --> 00:48:59.329 And that other brain areas become kind of like the 887 00:48:59.369 --> 00:49:03.650 backup generator that they're only used really when called upon. 888 00:49:03.949 --> 00:49:06.019 But when you get rid of the hippocampus, that's certainly 889 00:49:06.059 --> 00:49:07.760 an instance where it becomes called upon. 890 00:49:09.059 --> 00:49:12.320 And in the, you know, you mentioned turn on the genes. 891 00:49:12.340 --> 00:49:14.320 So I have to do a little shout out because we're, 892 00:49:14.590 --> 00:49:17.610 you know, right after the announcement of the Nobel Prize 893 00:49:17.710 --> 00:49:19.730 for Optogenetics with Dr. 894 00:49:19.769 --> 00:49:19.969 Karnak. 895 00:49:20.809 --> 00:49:25.429 Deisseroth. And you mentioned him in your book as kind 896 00:49:25.449 --> 00:49:31.989 of a fundamental, you know, infrastructure by which modern neuroscience comes. 897 00:49:32.050 --> 00:49:34.949 And I, I don't want to get into the, the 898 00:49:35.329 --> 00:49:38.489 the nerdy level of that, but just wanted to, you know, 899 00:49:38.570 --> 00:49:42.210 acknowledge that, you know, you are sitting on top of 900 00:49:42.349 --> 00:49:46.530 his shoulders, who's sitting on, you know, and I found 901 00:49:46.550 --> 00:49:49.610 it really fascinating that, you know, we had this conversation 902 00:49:49.639 --> 00:49:52.760 and that just happened and it was all kind of synchronistic, right? 903 00:49:53.260 --> 00:49:57.099 So going back to memories, a couple of things. One 904 00:49:57.179 --> 00:50:03.579 is the human memory attention span juncture right now is 905 00:50:03.679 --> 00:50:07.440 under attack. Because we are living in a world in which, 906 00:50:07.480 --> 00:50:11.590 you know, there was just a big lawsuit about certain 907 00:50:11.730 --> 00:50:17.210 technological features of social media, for example, that serve up 908 00:50:17.269 --> 00:50:20.630 this very short term, you know, short clip content. And 909 00:50:20.750 --> 00:50:23.989 actually our conversation will probably be clipped in a different way. 910 00:50:24.030 --> 00:50:26.349 You know, there will be like a long tail of 911 00:50:26.429 --> 00:50:29.289 certain people who watch the whole conversation and then many 912 00:50:29.329 --> 00:50:31.449 more people who watch just the short clips. And that's 913 00:50:31.469 --> 00:50:33.429 just the world we live in, which kind of makes 914 00:50:33.449 --> 00:50:37.199 me sad, honestly. But But I also notice in my 915 00:50:37.960 --> 00:50:41.969 own memory, what's happening is that if I watch

shorts, 916 00:50:43.070 --> 00:50:46.449 I will literally have a thought, not after I watch 917 00:50:46.469 --> 00:50:49.070 the shorts, but if I'm watching shorts in the morning, 918 00:50:49.110 --> 00:50:52.699 let's say as I'm drinking my tea, and I'm getting 919 00:50:52.719 --> 00:50:57.179 this flip card of too much content of different kinds, 920 00:50:57.739 --> 00:51:00.159 too much switching costs in my brain, whatever you would say, 921 00:51:00.800 --> 00:51:03.510 then by the time I get to work, And I 922 00:51:03.550 --> 00:51:05.570 have a thought, oh, I want to look up this thing. 923 00:51:06.010 --> 00:51:09.170 I go to my phone, I go to the, you know, 924 00:51:09.250 --> 00:51:13.690 search engine on my phone and I literally forget. And 925 00:51:13.829 --> 00:51:16.210 I was like, oh my gosh. At first I was like, 926 00:51:16.289 --> 00:51:20.230 am I just aging rapidly suddenly? And then I realized, no, 927 00:51:20.289 --> 00:51:22.590 it's the short form content. So then I had to like, 928 00:51:22.860 --> 00:51:26.139 just like an addiction, I had to, you know, get. 929 00:51:26.159 --> 00:51:26.519 Rid of that. 930 00:51:27.860 --> 00:51:32.170 And, and really monitor myself kind of metacognitively, which means 931 00:51:32.230 --> 00:51:35.250 I'm watching myself do the thing, um, to make sure 932 00:51:35.289 --> 00:51:38.489 that I wasn't consuming too much of this. It's almost 933 00:51:38.510 --> 00:51:40.150 like dessert. Like I was just like, huh? 934 00:51:40.510 --> 00:51:40.789 You know? 935 00:51:42.190 --> 00:51:44.590 And so if you think of it that way, there's 936 00:51:44.630 --> 00:51:48.829 not much nutrition and human brain is dealing with more content, 937 00:51:48.929 --> 00:51:52.690 more information than it ever, ever has been presented with 938 00:51:52.809 --> 00:51:56.199 or barraged with, with these designs that also came out 939 00:51:56.219 --> 00:51:58.539 of Stanford in the lab that I was in of 940 00:51:58.659 --> 00:52:02.820 how to get people's attention to be, you know, addictive. Right. 941 00:52:03.519 --> 00:52:06.940 How are you seeing your work square with, you know, 942 00:52:06.960 --> 00:52:11.059 about memory and about motion square with this modern world 943 00:52:11.079 --> 00:52:13.980 where we're just annihilating people's memory systems? 944 00:52:15.019 --> 00:52:20.579 Yeah, I think about this a lot because short form 945 00:52:20.639 --> 00:52:24.219 media in any capacity can have a purpose and I 946 00:52:24.280 --> 00:52:26.840 think of it sometimes nowadays as a little bit like 947 00:52:26.900 --> 00:52:31.820 fast food, where fast food is not inherently good or bad. 948 00:52:31.980 --> 00:52:33.079 It's just fast food. 949 00:52:33.340 --> 00:52:35.510 But if we have fast food for breakfast, lunch and 950 00:52:35.550 --> 00:52:38.690 dinner every day, suddenly we're not getting the nutritional profiles 951 00:52:38.730 --> 00:52:41.530 that we need that we think will help sustain well-being 952 00:52:41.570 --> 00:52:44.210 in the biological system that is us. I think the 953 00:52:44.250 --> 00:52:46.969 unfortunate sinister part is when we start looking at things 954 00:52:46.989 --> 00:52:50.139 like attention and memory as an economy. where it's like, 955 00:52:50.199 --> 00:52:53.480 it's not, it's biology. So if we think about it 956 00:52:53.559 --> 00:52:56.119 as an economy, we can squeeze as many dollars out 957 00:52:56.159 --> 00:52:58.989 of it as we want. But that seems kind of 958 00:52:59.050 --> 00:53:01.650 not ethical. And that seems like we should certainly have 959 00:53:01.690 --> 00:53:03.469 a little bit more of like a moral compass of 960 00:53:03.489 --> 00:53:08.130 a conversation that, right, that actually views things like our 961 00:53:08.170 --> 00:53:12.929 memory and our attention as biologically fallible things that can 962 00:53:12.949 --> 00:53:16.030 be all too easily hijacked. I mean, for instance, like 963 00:53:16.070 --> 00:53:19.280 that The least surprising finding in the world, unfortunately, is 964 00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:22.840 that now that gambling is basically legal everywhere, that men 965 00:53:23.039 --> 00:53:25.380 from the ages of 18 to 35 have like a 966 00:53:25.380 --> 00:53:28.289 60 percent increase in gambling addiction. So this to me 967 00:53:28.369 --> 00:53:31.690 is a classic case of like where we're putting the 968 00:53:31.730 --> 00:53:34.590 money first and then we're being reactive and thinking about 969 00:53:34.610 --> 00:53:37.789 the fallout later when gambling we have the capacity of 970 00:53:37.849 --> 00:53:41.590 being proactive and saying, maybe why don't we pilot out 971 00:53:41.630 --> 00:53:43.239 some of these things, which, you know, unfortunately some of 972 00:53:43.260 --> 00:53:45.860 these companies probably have and then ignored already because the 973 00:53:45.900 --> 00:53:48.599 data wasn't in their favor. But the idea is that 974 00:53:49.179 --> 00:53:54.059 people's memories and decision-making is notoriously easy to control on 975 00:53:54.099 --> 00:53:57.079 a population level. Like we, we all exist in our 976 00:53:57.199 --> 00:54:01.769 own like correlated bubbles here. So it's pretty easy, I think, 977 00:54:01.809 --> 00:54:05.449 to say, let's, Let's put some of these ads out 978 00:54:05.489 --> 00:54:07.880 there or some of this bit of content from bots 979 00:54:07.980 --> 00:54:10.679 that will suddenly sway everything from whether or not we 980 00:54:10.719 --> 00:54:14.659 trust science to politics to who we're voting for. And 981 00:54:14.719 --> 00:54:17.519 it's like it's not even to get overly political. 982 00:54:17.699 --> 00:54:18.400 That's just the truth. 983 00:54:18.579 --> 00:54:21.280 Like, that's just the way these things work, because what 984 00:54:21.320 --> 00:54:25.099 we're doing is we're consuming content that is ubiquitous. that 985 00:54:25.119 --> 00:54:29.139 is

ubiquitously changing our minds and behavior. And I think 986 00:54:29.179 --> 00:54:31.090 that what you did, to be honest, is like the 987 00:54:31.840 --> 00:54:34.800 most helpful nugget of wisdom is to be metacognitive about 988 00:54:34.840 --> 00:54:37.929 it and say, is this a little bit too much 989 00:54:37.989 --> 00:54:43.010 fast food? Maybe after watching reels for an hour, I'm 990 00:54:43.050 --> 00:54:45.670 suddenly no better off. I'm like, well, I just wasted 991 00:54:45.690 --> 00:54:47.110 an hour of my life. Why did I do that? 992 00:54:47.630 --> 00:54:50.750 Because I'm very easy to convince to like, oh, I laughed. 993 00:54:50.789 --> 00:54:51.949 So let me click on the next one and the 994 00:54:51.989 --> 00:54:54.380 next one. And the companies know this. So I think 995 00:54:54.429 --> 00:54:58.019 it's definitely like it's it's not to say like burn 996 00:54:58.059 --> 00:55:01.079 it all down, but we should be super cognizant of 997 00:55:01.139 --> 00:55:04.340 our relationship with these tools that may not exactly have 998 00:55:04.519 --> 00:55:06.260 our psychological interest in mind. 999 00:55:06.280 --> 00:55:09.360 Yeah. And it's it's the incentive. You know, like you said, 1000 00:55:09.400 --> 00:55:12.039 it's it's the financial incentive. You know, my grad students 1001 00:55:12.079 --> 00:55:15.440 who start at Stanford, you know, with really, you know, 1002 00:55:15.639 --> 00:55:19.599 innocent questions and then went to meta and is are 1003 00:55:19.619 --> 00:55:22.300 kind of like doing the dark arts of behavior design 1004 00:55:22.360 --> 00:55:25.519 in that way, you know, are. not bad people. They're 1005 00:55:25.539 --> 00:55:30.840 just locked into a system that rewards them to, you know, 1006 00:55:31.739 --> 00:55:35.429 basically exploit the neuroscience and, you know, for, for bad, 1007 00:55:35.690 --> 00:55:38.949 you know, or to, to get people to not have 1008 00:55:39.329 --> 00:55:42.909 rich and thriving lives. And so, yeah, it, I mean, 1009 00:55:43.150 --> 00:55:46.760 I think that talk about the implicit memory system. I 1010 00:55:46.860 --> 00:55:50.380 think that as we experience more and more of this, like, 1011 00:55:51.239 --> 00:55:55.019 rage baiting and doom scrolling and those kinds of things 1012 00:55:55.239 --> 00:55:58.460 that are really subjecting our brain. And even the young people, 1013 00:55:58.500 --> 00:56:02.309 like they know, they know when there's scams or when 1014 00:56:02.329 --> 00:56:05.090 somebody's trying to manipulate them and things like that. And 1015 00:56:05.170 --> 00:56:09.090 so my dream is that people wake up and realize, oh, 1016 00:56:09.150 --> 00:56:13.929 it's not this fabricated manipulation at all. Like we actually 1017 00:56:14.449 --> 00:56:17.010 love each other. We actually know each other. We actually 1018 00:56:17.489 --> 00:56:19.539 can relate to each other because we all want the 1019 00:56:19.579 --> 00:56:20.139 same

thing. 1020 00:56:20.829 --> 00:56:21.469 We want love. 1021 00:56:21.489 --> 00:56:26.050 We want safety. We want belonging. We want interest and 1022 00:56:26.369 --> 00:56:30.730 meaning in our lives. And my hope is that as 1023 00:56:30.789 --> 00:56:33.820 we get saturated or we saturate the brain and the 1024 00:56:33.880 --> 00:56:38.860 younger generations show us that that's meaningless, that just like 1025 00:56:38.900 --> 00:56:42.059 the fast food chain, there's a reason why not everybody's 1026 00:56:42.099 --> 00:56:43.460 eating fast food three times a day. 1027 00:56:44.000 --> 00:56:44.260 Right. 1028 00:56:45.300 --> 00:56:48.869 That's a minority of the population doing that. And the 1029 00:56:48.949 --> 00:56:51.590 most of people are like, Oh, whole foods, you know? 1030 00:56:51.849 --> 00:56:55.309 So I think the pendulum will eventually swing where we 1031 00:56:55.590 --> 00:56:58.010 kind of wake up out of this, this, you know, 1032 00:56:58.170 --> 00:57:02.030 imagined a war game, if you will. Right. And look 1033 00:57:02.050 --> 00:57:04.889 at each other and say, Oh, wow. I'm, you know, 1034 00:57:04.909 --> 00:57:07.949 I know who you are and I feel the same way. And, 1035 00:57:08.139 --> 00:57:14.940 and that relatability across peoples is my, my vision for humanity. And, 1036 00:57:15.159 --> 00:57:17.619 you know, I know that there's a lot of obstacles. 1037 00:57:17.659 --> 00:57:18.900 I know there's a lot of things that we have 1038 00:57:18.940 --> 00:57:22.030 to deal with, including, I was thinking about, you know, 1039 00:57:22.119 --> 00:57:24.969 my husband and I argue sometimes. I'm sure you as 1040 00:57:25.030 --> 00:57:29.190 a husband and your wife might do that too. And 1041 00:57:29.570 --> 00:57:31.949 one of the things with memory that's so, you know, 1042 00:57:32.010 --> 00:57:35.010 disabling for me is when I'm in the heat of like, 1043 00:57:35.489 --> 00:57:39.579 you know, he said, she said, I say, well, then 1044 00:57:39.619 --> 00:57:41.320 you said this. And he's like, I didn't say that. 1045 00:57:41.719 --> 00:57:45.579 It's never more obvious to me. that the brain aid 1046 00:57:45.679 --> 00:57:48.440 does not recall things accurately. So we need to be 1047 00:57:48.679 --> 00:57:53.739 super humble and super questioning of, you know, there's that 1048 00:57:53.780 --> 00:57:56.960 bumper sticker, like don't believe everything you think. And that 1049 00:57:57.239 --> 00:58:00.119 then the second thing is just to give grace to 1050 00:58:00.239 --> 00:58:03.639 one another, um, in this, in this world where we 1051 00:58:03.679 --> 00:58:06.949 are walking around with these, like, you know, really flawed 1052 00:58:07.010 --> 00:58:10.070 memories that even if you don't have Alzheimer's or anything, 1053 00:58:10.250 --> 00:58:14.360 you know, deteriorative, um, that we have, we're flawed. And, 1054 00:58:14.719 --> 00:58:16.659 and that gives a little bit of hopefully a grace 1055 00:58:16.699 --> 00:58:21.070 and a buffer to each other of what did you 1056 00:58:21.090 --> 00:58:24.329 mean by that? Or did you say that? Like, just 1057 00:58:24.449 --> 00:58:28.369 almost like curiosity being the antidote for that certainty that 1058 00:58:28.429 --> 00:58:30.389 our brain is telling us that it was this and 1059 00:58:30.429 --> 00:58:32.489 he did that and he said this and you know, 1060 00:58:33.150 --> 00:58:35.449 all that stuff. So I just, I just wanted to 1061 00:58:35.929 --> 00:58:38.050 end on that note. What do you think about that? 1062 00:58:38.070 --> 00:58:40.340 Do you think we can improve our relationships? 1063 00:58:41.409 --> 00:58:44.630 Yeah, I completely share that worldview though, to be totally honest. 1064 00:58:44.650 --> 00:58:47.829 Like I'm very, a cup is three quarters full person 1065 00:58:47.909 --> 00:58:51.889 in that we're like, it's. 1066 00:58:50.559 --> 00:58:51.579 Not doom in my head. 1067 00:58:51.619 --> 00:58:53.860 It's not doom and gloom, but it's not ponies in sunshine. 1068 00:58:54.079 --> 00:58:56.679 It's a pony walking through brimstone kind of thing. So 1069 00:58:57.179 --> 00:59:00.039 I think that with reality, yeah, I think there's no 1070 00:59:00.079 --> 00:59:04.269 substitute for reality. And then what we see, whether it's 1071 00:59:04.309 --> 00:59:06.170 the news or online, it's not to say, oh, it's 1072 00:59:06.250 --> 00:59:08.760 all a lie or it's all true, but we got 1073 00:59:08.780 --> 00:59:11.179 to be curious and take it a bit with a 1074 00:59:11.199 --> 00:59:11.800 grain of salt. 1075 00:59:11.900 --> 00:59:13.139 And I think that you're right. 1076 00:59:13.539 --> 00:59:16.179 Whenever I go, for instance, and give science talks, it 1077 00:59:16.199 --> 00:59:18.590 doesn't matter which state I am in or even which 1078 00:59:18.630 --> 00:59:22.030 country for that matter. When you see thousands of people 1079 00:59:22.070 --> 00:59:24.190 that are there that care about the brain or care 1080 00:59:24.230 --> 00:59:26.949 about neuroscience, That's not what's making it on the news, 1081 00:59:27.090 --> 00:59:29.869 and that's not what's going viral on social media often. 1082 00:59:30.230 --> 00:59:32.969 It's the bad news that very much exists and that 1083 00:59:32.989 --> 00:59:35.940 we very much obviously have to continue to do stuff about, 1084 00:59:36.300 --> 00:59:37.739 or do even more of it for that matter. 1085 00:59:38.239 --> 00:59:40.059 It's to say that when we have our boots in. 1086 00:59:40.019 --> 00:59:44.559 The ground, that there are very real reasons to be hopeful, 1087 00:59:44.920 --> 00:59:48.719 and we often find that in each other. So by 1088 00:59:49.119 --> 00:59:51.289 connecting the dots between each other, like Bill Nye the 1089 00:59:51.329 --> 00:59:54.150 Science Guy has this quote of like, everyone in the 1090 00:59:54.190 --> 00:59:56.230 world knows something you don't know. And I think that 1091 00:59:56.269 --> 00:59:58.309 if we approach each other in the world that way, 1092 00:59:58.670 --> 01:00:02.429 with a bit of learning from each other, within reason, yeah, 1093 01:00:02.449 --> 01:00:05.150 I think that that would be a pretty good antidote 1094 01:00:05.210 --> 01:00:09.650 for at least increasing our empathy with each other over time. 1095 01:00:10.510 --> 01:00:14.199 That's a perfect end note, Dr. Ramirez. I really appreciate 1096 01:00:14.239 --> 01:00:20.340 your positivity, your vulnerability in a world where that's not encouraged. 1097 01:00:21.590 --> 01:00:28.050 the truth telling, the translation of the really complex neuroscience 1098 01:00:28.090 --> 01:00:32.070 that you deal with into our daily lives. So I 1099 01:00:32.090 --> 01:00:33.969 would just say, keep doing the good work. 1100 01:00:33.989 --> 01:00:35.849 Thank you. Yeah, will do. 1101 01:00:36.730 --> 01:00:39.409 And I really am grateful to have you here. So 1102 01:00:39.489 --> 01:00:40.789 thank you so much for your time today. 1103 01:00:41.269 --> 01:00:41.630 Thank you. 1104 01:00:41.670 --> 01:00:43.349 This was such a pleasure. And I hope to see 1105 01:00:43.389 --> 01:00:44.250 you again sometime soon. 1106 01:00:44.730 --> 01:00:45.289 Yeah, let's do it.