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Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes to find the most effective and practical science-based tools for mental health, fitness, and productivity. I'm Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine. And now to my conversation with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Young. Dr. Immordino-Young. Glad to be here. Very glad to see you. I've already heard you talk about inspiration and awe. Aha. In my opinion, inspiration and awe are quite complex emotional experiences when compared to, say, fear or happiness.
Mm, yes. What is the role of inspiration, awe, and Agha stories. in how we learn and experience life from an early age? So, I think what you've noticed is actually fundamental to human existence: our highest complex states of brain and psyche are at the same time deeply rooted in the basic biological mechanisms that sustain our lives. Our beliefs, experiences, interpretations of meaning-this is where stories emerge. The stories we create-collectively with other people, culturally, or within ourselves-become a kind of connecting link that structures how we construct our
own experience and even, I would say, consciousness. When we connect to these basic survival systems, engaging them in our narratives about the nature of reality and the power of meaning, we simultaneously gain this amazing, fundamental, and yet elevated state in which we experience expansion; we feel that everything is incredibly beautiful, and I would say we actually tap into the same basic survival mechanisms that make us conscious and alive. And this, in fact, is the power of human existence. This is the power of our intelligence at this late stage of evolution. I heard you say earlier-and I like that quote, and I want to credit you, not me-that our brains are essentially there to control our bodies.
Mhm. Could you comment on this statement that the brain is the organ responsible for controlling the body, and what this dialogue looks like? The first thing I'll say is that I learned about this idea while working with Antonio Damasio, and he taught me that this sense of the body is key. It is the ability of the organism to represent or reflect the state of the body's internal and external environment, which becomes the substrate for consciousness and mind.
My work, in fact, is about the very question you are asking: how do we construct a narrative, transform a conscious feeling into something resembling a story, a state of belief, an emotional state, or an experience? And what is the role of physicality in this? What is the role of the brain in this? And also, what is the role of culture, cultural context, and other people in this? Because what we're really discovering now across the sciences is how incredibly social and interdependent our species is. That is, our biology is inherently social. We are directly dependent on other people to form our own sense of self, we interact with each other, construct and co-create a sense of self and meaning through these cultural spaces and subtle ways of adapting to each other,
mentally and physically, which leads to a sense of "we." So, going back to your original question: it is quite clear that the background sense of the body, its mapping and regulation is a basic substrate, a kind of springboard for the mind. And that's how we manage our survival. You know, now we have a lot of evidence from different fields of science about the interdependence of our stress, our social relationships, our immunity, our ability to digest food, and it's becoming quite clear that we are not just ourselves. There is an entire microbiome and a multitude of other organisms that help us with this and collaborate with us. And the brain is a specialized organ of the body. In fact, it's not something separate.
It is an outgrowth or development of the same process. It is the specialization of this process, its localization, that provides enough processing power that we can build all sorts of sensations, mental states, beliefs, and representations from what is essentially just the feeling of being here. And the amazing thing is that our brain also imposes these states back on our body. Therefore, the way our body reacts and modulates in response to mental states is also very real. So, we have a kind of dynamic conversation going on between the brain, body, and mind, which seem to co-create each other in real time.
And that leads to all sorts of dynamic spaces of possibility for who we are and what we feel as we grow older over time. And I believe that the legacy of our human intelligence is to use this space of possibilities and begin to build from them meaningful chains of ideas, chains of experiences, which over time we call history. I would like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't . This means electrolytes: sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the right proportions, but without sugar. Proper hydration is essential for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can impair
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flavor. Element now has a limited edition lemonade flavor that is simply incredibly delicious. I don't want to say that I like any one more than the others, but this lemonade is on par with my favorite flavors- raspberry or watermelon. Again, I can't choose just one flavor, I like them all. If you want to try Element, go to drinkelement.com/huberman, spelled drink l m n t. com/huberman to receive a free Element sample kit with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Once again: drinkelement.com/huberman to get a free trial set. I am fascinated by the idea that in the early stages of life we have some experience interacting with the world.
It can be an interaction with other people or with some object, and it makes us feel something powerful. This sets a kind of recognition pattern, meaning that later in life, and perhaps throughout our lives, we consciously or subconsciously always try to return to the feeling of that same excitement or inspiration. So is what we learn throughout our lives a recognition of sensations in our bodies, or is it a cognitive process, or both? Yes, it is a dynamic state that constantly arises. Let me give you an example that I sometimes use to better understand this idea.
My little daughter, Nora, when she was two years old, I was once sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. I was upset about something that happened in my life, but, you know, I didn't cry or anything. I just sat there. I guess I looked like I was lost in my own thoughts. She was playing on the floor. She walked up to me and noticed that I wasn't quite present next to her. My hand was hanging down. She picked up my hand, held it to her face, and said, "Don't worry, Mom." I will take care of you. And I said, yes, I said, oh, Nora, that's so sweet, honey. I'll take care of you too. And she said: Mom, I really love you. I really
love you. And then she added: I mean, I really love your hand. I really love your hand, right? Fast forward two years, almost exactly two years, she is four and a half months old. One evening she was lying in bed in the dark, I passed by and listened at the door to see if she was already asleep, and I heard her whisper: Mom, I love you more than I am glad that the day is coming. What changed in her development from two to four years old, right? I would say that the physiological basis of her attachment to her mother is probably quite similar.
She had this kind of visceral, automatic, biological, you could say, connection with me, an emotional attachment that she tried to use to understand the world, to be active in it, and to adapt to the situation, helping me in the first case, right? But what has changed significantly is not the basis of this attachment, but her ability to conceptualize it, right? At two years old, her love is perceived as an incredibly concrete, embodied, real physical thing. Like, I love you, I really love the part of my body I'm pressing against my face right now, right? And two years later, she can conceptualize that love as an idea, which is that it would be terrible if it was always night and there was no
sun and no daylight, and I couldn't go out and play, and I couldn't, right? So she thinks about how grateful she is for the sunlight, and in her childish mind she combines that with a sense of attachment to me, using one to explain the other, right? So, both things now matter. And that's how, I think, we start to develop these very basic physiological states of attachment, states of aversion, right? Motivational states of various kinds turn into mental states, beliefs, poems, you know, love songs, all the things she does, right?
Even at the age of two to four, these are truly mental elaborations, giving meaning to that very basic physiological sensation. So, contact with your hand or both hands was the real-life example that she, as a two-year-old, used to denote an internal feeling. So the question is, do we do throughout our lives what we recognize, well, I don't want to call them primitives, but let's say, basic emotional states MGM. which are not infinite, but each of them can exist on a certain continuum. That is, from a little love to full-on infatuation, you know, along the continuum and everything in between. Mhm. From mild irritation to full-blown rage Mhm. Are we talking about maybe 10-30 basic emotions that we just divide our experience into, layer it
, and it becomes the story of our life? Is that what you think about it? I think, yes, I think there are a huge number of basic physiological mechanisms that become motivational mechanisms, right? In every sense, adaptive mechanisms that we share with all forms of life. Essentially, we take these very primitive physiological regulatory abilities that exist to sustain our lives and create a form of consciousness out of them, an awareness of these processes, which becomes something mentally powerful for us
And then we start to develop more and more skill, more and more wisdom in creating a story that most directly and simply explains what you imagine another person might have experienced, given the complexity of the context in which they find themselves. It becomes more and more dynamic, more and more inferential. This also brings us back to what you said about development. In fact, that's how I see development throughout life. My two-year-old loves my hand, then she loves me as much as something else she values very much, like daylight, and then she moves on from that. And when she's 80, God willing, someday, right? She will create a different story, highlighting things that
matter in a more subtle way that others might not notice because of the historical context, because of her own life experiences that she brings to this story, right? So the things that become noticeable, the things that you learn to notice and build a story from, are developmental and learned over time, but the underlying fundamental processes related to emotions always drive the need to create a story. So when we perceive things, whether they are very simple, like a visual scene, or extremely complex and detailed, like a speech by Martin Luther King. We impose our own expectations of what is out there on the world as much as we perceive what is actually out there, don't we? So, in imposing this on the world, we
bring what might be called our cultural ways of seeing and knowing, our values and beliefs, and we superimpose them on the experience of what we observe. So even in very basic aspects, things like cultural values change the way people observe and remember scenes, right? You know, there's this classic work by Shinobu Kitayama and other researchers that shows that in Japan compared to the United States, when you show people a scene, let's say an underwater scene with all the beautiful things that are underwater-rocks, plants, small fish swimming by, and then one big fish, right? And if you ask a Japanese person what kind of painting it is, they will usually say that it is a scene with rocks, plants, and small fish, with a
large fish swimming past. If you ask a Western-educated American what this painting is, he will say, "Oh, it's a fish swimming through the scene." He showed that this happens very, very automatically. This is a very low level. It's a perceptual level, not just a conceptual level, and it actually changes what people actually notice in a scene, what they remember later, and all that, right? We learn to filter incoming information in a certain way. We're not little, you know, robots or little video cameras walking around and watching the world. And so when we see something as complex as social history, we impose all sorts of personal experiences on it. So in reality, we move through the world not in
such a receptive, passive way, but actively impose ourselves on the world. We actively apply our interpretive power and what we do next depends on the way we adapt, right? Piaget talked about this 100 years ago: we adapt or assimilate what may contradict our schemas, or what may be consistent with them and reinforce them This is very important for how people perceive the world in a broader sense, because think, for example, about such a terrible topic as genocide or the Holocaust, right How does this even happen, right? How can people who have empathy, who love their family and their neighbors, suddenly start destroying each other, huh? What
happened is that they changed the way they describe the context of these events; The way they interpret other people's pain has fundamentally changed: from "it's another person suffering" to "it's not a person." It's a rat, a pig, an insect, or something else, right? And this process of dehumanization allows us to change our set of narratives to bring a different system of values and beliefs into this space. I'm just glad you brought up that example, because I think for a lot of people, it's just unthinkable. But I've never heard a formulation like yours: if the story becomes not about another person's suffering, but primarily
about one's own history of suffering, and this can suppress or literally block the neural circuits that trigger empathy, then it makes perfect sense from a neurobiological point of view why this is at least possible. And, of course, I don't think that's a good thing. It's just that, like many other aspects of our biology and psychology, this is reality. That's right. And I think I remain, as always, an optimist. I'm always an educator too, right? I am, you know, a teacher. I am also very interested in how we create educational experiences for young people.
I believe that the only hope for protecting oneself from such possibilities is to systematically develop the inclinations and skills to question one's own motives, deconstruct one's own assumptions about situations, and systematically engage with other people's perspectives. And when we develop these tendencies, we hope to form a kind of veto system within ourselves, right? A system for verifying one's own motivations through the experiences of other people who are influenced by these motivations. A lot of what's driving us, even though we seem to be moving in a different, somewhat political direction now, and a lot of what's brought us to these very controversial political times, for example, not just, you know, the rise of
authoritarianism, not just in the United States, or the threat of it not just in the United States, but in many places in the world that are, by the way, Western-educated, is that we're taught: to know something is to have it within you, and then to carry it with you and impose it on the world forever. I know how to solve second-grade algebra, and I can do it when you ask-that's what a good student is. As people learn to engage with their knowledge in a more inquisitive, open, and flexible way, we naturally learn to test our assumptions, to rethink what we think we know, and-and this is a key point in development-to notice when we need to do that and when we should just move on, and that's perfectly normal.
And so what we're doing to ourselves right now, both in the education system and in things like social media, is reinforcing our own biases by going down rabbit holes where you hear the same thing over and over again, which reinforces your own belief system; and then you start to believe these things, and they lead you to a certain kind of action or belief system that can never be deconstructed. And it's very comfortable, and it's easy to do. But the responsibility that I think falls on us as individuals and as groups, as human beings, given our incredible intelligence, is to rise above that and actually look at ourselves reflexively, to deconstruct our preferences, our values and beliefs, and systematically
question them, especially in terms of how they affect, whether they change the situation of those around us or not, right? Situations and the stability of the world that supports us or not. And so it all comes down to emotions guiding our thinking. So we have these very basic primitive physiological states that vary depending on the individual, the degree to which they are, you know, incredibly powerful, easily triggered or not, you know. There is a big range in this. And all this variability makes things interesting, doesn't it?
It's our ability to learn to live them and know, to develop wisdom about when we need to question our own emotions and deconstruct the narratives we use to validate or justify such emotions, to assess whether we are really right, whether we should continue, or whether we should step back and change our approach, right? And so this kind of mental flexibility really arises from emotional predisposition. This is our ability. So this brings us back to what you asked at the very beginning. It's our ability to not just act from what seems like a "bottom-up" perspective, although of course it always starts from the "
top-down" perspective, because you have a certain interpretation of the world that makes you feel fear, that makes your body react that way, you know? But also the ability to rise above it, to go beyond it, and to think about what the broader systemic, historical, ethical, civic implications are of this narrative that I tell myself and that by default seems to be the truth. And how can I systematically deconstruct these things, and how can I invite others to give me their version of these events and systematically engage with them so that I can really assess the consequences of my beliefs. So the point is that the emotions we're talking about today are actually the fundamental drivers of all our
thinking, decision-making, relationship building, right? Our life in the community and our personal well-being-all in one cocktail. But that doesn't excuse us from acting at their request. This, in turn, gives us the responsibility to develop a disposition to systematically question and rethink them when they do not serve us or the world properly. I would like to take a short break and thank our sponsor, AG1. I am happy to announce that AG1 has just released their newest formula-AG1 Pro. AG1 Pro takes the clinically proven AG1 formula, which is a blend of vitamins, minerals,
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I think this is one very important step that we as a society have to take, otherwise we won't make it. And I know that sounds a little dramatic, but I really think it's true: we need to become bolder in how we think about the learning process for our youth, and what it really means to provide young people with developmentally appropriate opportunities to grow as thinkers, as individuals, as citizens, and as members of their communities. I think our Western education system has some very basic beliefs about what counts as knowledge, what is worth thinking about and knowing, and how do I know it
I believe this is deeply problematic and leads us to actively discourage us from truly playing with ideas, systematically engaging with our own beliefs, deconstructing them, and working with complex perspectives on topics and ideas. That's just not what school is for And that's exactly how it should be. We need to change. Now, the way we think about school is largely measured by so-called " learning outcomes," right? What did you learn? And how do we know this? We're forcing you to demonstrate this on your own under limited time and under certain circumstances, right? Or you come back, I'll ask you a question, and you'll give me the answer I expected
. And if you do it on time, then I'll say you've learned it, and that's it. A tick, right? Compared to the system, and such educational systems exist. For example, the New York Performance Assessment Consortium is a consortium of public schools. They received permission from the New York State government not to take the Regents exam as a graduation requirement; instead, they have alternative ways of assessing children. Children work for months to years, depending on the project, on these deep, intellectual, interdisciplinary projects where they explore a topic and engage in their own learning process about that topic and.
They invite teachers, community experts, and other people, and they present their work, discuss it, talk about their own learning process, what might happen next, what decisions they made, and all that kind of stuff. Thesis. That's right. You have to come up with not only a job, but also questions. You have to look at the world and notice what we don't understand but would be useful to understand, and find a way to isolate it and systematically investigate it. Why don't we build educational systems, starting in preschool, that systematically engage people in such intellectual curiosity?
We know that in preschool, if you don't have water tables, sand tables, fun things, choices, ways to interact, you know what I'm talking about, things that are really age appropriate for three-year-olds to touch, to squeeze, to taste, and to do all these things, they're just going to burst out on the floor in frustration. They just won't come. They will refuse to go to school, right? And they will lie in the doorway, throwing tantrums. So, we know how to teach young children well. That doesn't mean we always do it. But we know that they need to be interested. They need to be invited to think, they bring their natural curiosity, and you expand the range of ways they can use that curiosity to discover new things they had
n't even thought about before, right? Then we go into the standard "so- called" education system, and for some reason we think that this natural human tendency to delve into ideas and the world in an interesting and meaningful way is ineffective, inappropriate, and frightening, and we teach kids, "No, no, no, no, no, turn it off." This is dangerous. If you do that, it's considered disobedience, right? And what we want from you in return is simply to let me give you what I've already figured out for you. I will give it to you, and you will give it back to me. I think what you describe is key. Um, and I never thought about it from the perspective that, yes, as children we are given everything that stimulates our sensory
world in the right way: touch, sound, and sight. We try to construct meaning in our minds. And the fact that we as students, very young students, can impose our own internal motivation to do certain things and not others, and that's not supported as we grow older. At what age do you think this stops? And also, how do we solve the problem that there are certain basic skills that not everyone can do well? And so, for a child who says, "I don't like math." You'll still have to teach her. You have to appreciate it. How, how do you evoke joy or gratitude in such a child? It seems that the emotional system is a key system to use for learning. So could you talk about the
connection between emotions and learning? Because I understand that this is really at the heart of what you do. You could say this: what you feel emotions about is what you think about, right? And what you think about is what you can hope to learn. So, if emotions are related to results: did I do the right thing? Will I fail? Did I get an " excellent"? I'm too smart. I am so stupid. Any of this, right? If these are the main drivers, then that's what you're learning about. If emotions are connected to real ideas, mathematics, physics, why does the ball roll down the ramp? Wait a minute. This is the same reason why the Moon revolves around. Do you understand what I mean? I mean, they exist, right? When emotions
are directed at ideas, then you engage in the cognition of those ideas. So I would argue that by setting up the kind of accountability system that we have, we've taught people that their emotions should be about these important performance indicators, which means that's what we're learning to think about. Results. Results, not how to think about ideas, not the intrinsic power of using mathematics to understand the world in a different way. You engage children by creating rich problem environments and tasks that encourage them to try to interact with what sparks curiosity, what is meaningful to them, or by letting a child who really hates it bring something of their own
For example: What are you really interested in, kid? Start with that and start using your academic skills in a way that empowers you to do what interests you. Here is the way to do it. Use your writing, math, persuasion, filmmaking, or anything else you have to tell a story about something you find deeply meaningful and important to understand. We put the cart before the horse. I'm not saying that you don't need to learn math, reading, writing, or other similar skills. But we consider the contents of the cart-what is inside it-to be the indicator and goal of the
educational system, when in reality what matters most is the quality of the horse itself. Will this horse be able to pull a load? This is personal development, and what they put in their cart serves that development. It is a toolbox of ways of knowing and understanding that you take with you when you go out into the world. But this requires real pedagogical skill from educators who are not actually supported, funded, or taught to think in terms of development. Did you ask when does this stop? It depends on what education system you are in and what demographic group you belong to. But for almost all but a few
privileged students in progressive alternative schools, this disappears in adolescence-just when learning becomes serious and, ironically, just when children are developing the neural, psychosocial capabilities and drive to seek complex meanings in everything they do. You know, these aren't just my shoes, they're an expression of what I believe in about sustainability, sports, adults, and counterculture, right? As we grow older and seek to challenge and contemplate larger meanings , to engage with perspectives, emotions, social issues, and important existential questions-whether in physics, art, or the public sphere- what do we do?
We are redoubling our efforts to control the input and output mechanisms that are considered so-called academic rigor and achievement. We start by asking the children: What is the name of the servant who appears in this scene in Great Expectations? Is it Molly or Maria? And who the hell cares? After all, that's not the main point of reading "Great Expectations," is it? We take it away because we are afraid. As educators, as a society, we have a certain narrative about the propensity of young people in particular, but also of all people in general, to build and create meanings in these
spaces and to shape ourselves within them. This subjectivity scares us because we worry that they will take a risk, do something stupid, step out of line, not fit into the traditional system. And by trying to protect them and shield them from their own curiosity, their tendency to create meaning, we, I would say, are actually inhibiting their personal development. In fact, we are creating people who lack the inner drive to become powerful thinkers in the world. We are afraid to give our children this power, and the role of adults is to support young people, to help them learn to be reflective, systematic, demanding of themselves, developing the ability and inclination to deconstruct their own
beliefs, goals, ways of understanding the world and constantly rebuild them in such an intellectually humble, inquisitive way, where we constantly question ourselves and others, where we are ready to be in the uncertainty of complex problems and think through possibilities, instead of quickly settling on one solution. What does the school expect from you? Let me just focus on one solution, which, by the way, I already had in mind when I asked you the question, right? Instead, it would be worth sitting down with young people and providing them with the space, in a safe and appropriate way, to actually work through difficult and important issues. When children develop a predisposition to do this
, they learn to manage those purely human qualities that we have been talking about all this time. They learn to value these qualities in themselves and manage them. You are amazing, and I really mean it. I feel like we could explore these ideas forever, and you give so many real-life examples. Actually, that's one of the things I love about your work-that it's really rooted in real- life practices. Thank you. And your thoughts and views on education, on how it can be improved at the level of children's home learning, self-education, the work of
teachers, and the education system in general, I hope, will be heard everywhere, because they can really be implemented. We're not talking about needing to buy a bunch of everything. No, we need to start with a different attitude. We need to start with a different goal. Yes, the goal of education should not be learning; learning is not the goal . This is not a result. This is supposed to be personal development, right? How does a person change themselves after learning this? And then you create learning opportunities to change who people can become, right? So, learning is
present, but it is not the end point. It's just a vehicle for something else that we haven't paid enough attention to, which is the development of the individual, of who they become by learning this. Wonderfully said. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for your work, and I look forward to discussing new research with you. Perfectly. I will be back. Thank you.
