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How the Brain Works, Curing Blindness & How to Navigate a Career Path | Dr. E.J. Chichilnisky

Episode 168 Mar 18, 2024 1h 56m 13 insights
In this episode, my guest is Dr. E.J. Chichilnisky, Ph.D., a professor of neurosurgery and ophthalmology at Stanford University. He studies how we see and uses that information to build artificial eyes that restore vision to the blind.  We discuss how understanding the retina (the light-sensing brain tissue that lines the back of our eyes) is critical to knowing how our brain works more generally.  We discuss brain augmentation with biologically informed prostheses, robotics, and AI and what this means for medicine and humanity.  We also discuss E.J.’s unique journey into neuroscience and how changing fields multiple times, combined with some wandering, taught him how to guide his decision-making in all realms of life.  This episode ought to be of interest to anyone interested in learning how the brain works from a world-class neuroscientist, those interested in the future of brain therapeutics and people seeking inspiration and tools for navigating their own professional and life journey. For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com.
Actionable Insights

1. Prioritize Electrolyte Hydration

Ensure adequate hydration with electrolytes (sodium, magnesium, potassium) for optimal brain and body function, as even slight dehydration diminishes cognitive and physical performance and these electrolytes are vital for cell function, especially neurons.

2. Morning & Exercise Electrolytes

Dissolve one packet of Element in 16-32 ounces of water and drink it first thing in the morning. Also, consume Element dissolved in water during any physical exercise to maintain proper hydration and electrolyte balance.

3. Restore Energy with NSDR/Meditation

Engage in meditation, Yoga Nidra, or Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) sessions, even for just 10 minutes, to greatly restore cognitive and physical energy and place the brain and body into different states.

4. Support Gut Health with AG1

Take Athletic Greens (AG1) once or twice daily to provide probiotics essential for gut health, which profoundly impacts the brain, immune system, and overall biological function, and to meet foundational nutritional needs.

5. Practice Self-Awareness & Love

Actively strive to ‘know thyself’ by understanding your values, ‘be thyself’ by resisting external pressures, and ’love thyself’ as a learned skill, integrating these principles into your daily life for personal development.

6. Follow Your Sense of Ease

Pay attention to the feeling of ’ease’ as an internal compass, indicating when you are on a path that truly makes sense for you and aligns with your authentic self, guiding your life choices.

7. Daily Informal Meditation & Yoga

Cultivate an informal meditation practice for 5-10 minutes each morning with coffee to transition into consciousness. Additionally, consider an Ashtanga-related yoga practice for its physical, spiritual, meditative, and breath-focused benefits.

8. Explore Diverse Paths for Purpose

Wander through different experiences and fields, even if it feels accidental, to discover what you are good at and where you can make a significant difference, leading to the identification of your life’s mission.

9. Avoid Visual Distractions While Driving

Do not engage in visually demanding tasks like reading texts while driving, as it distracts the visual system from detecting dangerous objects and can lead to accidents, unlike hands-free phone calls which use different brain pathways.

10. Detect ‘Ease’ in Mentorship

As a teacher or mentor, observe body language and emotional cues in others to detect when they ‘drop into ease,’ which indicates that advice or information resonates and makes sense to them, enhancing effective guidance.

11. Insight 11

When introducing novel or augmented sensory information to the brain, such as increased visual resolution, do so gradually in incremental steps to allow for neural plasticity and adaptation, rather than implementing abrupt, overwhelming changes.

12. Insight 12

Design neural interfaces to be ‘smart’ by enabling them to record, stimulate, and learn the specific electrical properties and cell types of the surrounding neural circuitry. This allows for precise, adaptive communication with the brain, rather than crude, non-specific stimulation.

13. Insight 13

In the future, harnessing distinct retinal cell types to deliver different visual information in parallel (e.g., text to one type, motion to another) could potentially enable new forms of safe visual multitasking that are currently impossible.