Dr. David Berson: Understanding Your Brain's Logic & Function

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2021

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, my guest is Dr. David Berson, Professor & Chairman of Neuroscience at Brown University. Dr. Berson discovered the neurons in your eye that set your biological rhythms for sleep, wakefulness, mood and appetite. He is also a world-renowned teacher of basic and advanced neuroscience, having taught thousands of university lectures on this topic. Many of his students have become world-leading neuroscientists and teachers themselves. Here Dr. Berson takes us on a structured journey into and around the nervous system, explaining: how we perceive the world and our internal landscape, how we balance, see, and remember. Also, how we learn and perform reflexive and deliberate actions, how we visualize and imagine in our mind, and how the various circuits of the brain coordinate all these incredible feats. We discuss practical and real-life examples of neural circuit function across the lifespan. Dr. Berson gives us a masterclass in the nervous system—one that, in just less than two hours, will teach you an entire course's worth about the brain and how yours works. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. David Berson (00:02:55) Sponsors (00:08:02) How We See (00:10:02) Color Vision (00:13:47) “Strange” Vision (00:16:56) How You Orient In Time (00:25:45) Body Rhythms, Pineal function, Light & Melatonin, Blueblockers (00:34:45) Spending Times Outdoors Improves Eyesight (00:36:20) Sensation, Mood, & Self-Image (00:41:03) Sense of Balance (00:50:43) Why Pigeons Bob Their Heads, Motion Sickness (01:00:03) Popping Ears (01:02:35) Midbrain & Blindsight (01:10:44) Why Tilted Motion Feels Good (01:13:24) Reflexes vs. Deliberate Actions (01:16:35) Basal Ganglia & the “2 Marshmallow Test” (01:24:40) Suppressing Reflexes: Cortex (01:33:33) Neuroplasticity (01:36:27) What is a Connectome? (01:45:20) How to Learn (More About the Brain) (01:49:04) Book Suggestion, my Berson Appreciation (01:50:20) Zero-Cost ways to Support the HLP, Guest Suggestions, Sponsors, Supplements Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.8	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.1	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. David Berson, professor of medical science,
0:18.9	neurobiology and ophthalmology at Brown University.
0:22.0	Dr. Berson's laboratory is credited with discovering the cells in the eye that set your circadian rhythms.
0:27.4	These are the so-called intrinsically photosensitive melanopsin cells and while that's a mouthful,
0:33.3	all you need to know for a sake of this introduction is that those are the cells that inform your brain embody about the time of day.
0:40.4	Dr. Berson's laboratory has also made a number of other important discoveries about how we convert our perceptions of the outside world into motor action.
0:49.7	More personally, Dr. Berson has been my go-to resource for all things neuroscience for nearly two decades.
0:56.6	I knew of his reputation as a spectacular researcher for a long period of time and then many years ago, I cold-called him out of the blue.
1:04.4	I
1:05.8	basically corraled him into a long conversation over the phone after which he invited me out to Brown and we've been discussing
1:12.2	neuroscience and how the brain works and the emerging new
1:16.0	technologies and the emerging new concepts in neuroscience for a very long time now.
1:21.7	You're going to realize today why Dr. Berson is my go-to source.
1:25.0	He has an exceptionally clear and organized view of how the nervous system works.
1:31.0	There are many many parts of the nervous system, different nuclei and connections and circuits and chemicals and so forth,
1:37.3	but it takes a special kind of person to be able to organize that information into a structured and logical framework
1:43.5	that can allow us to make sense of how we function in terms of what we feel, what we experience, how we move through the world.
1:50.2	Dr. Berson is truly one of a kind and his ability to synthesize and organize and communicate that information
1:57.0	and I give him credit as one of my mentors and one of the people that I respect most in the field of science and medical science generally.
2:05.0	Today Dr. Berson takes us on a journey from the periphery of the nervous system, meaning from the outside,
	...

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