Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing the first guest of the Huberman Lab Podcast.

My guest is Dr. Carl Diceroth.

Dr. Carl Diceroth is a medical doctor, he's a psychiatrist, and a research scientist at Stanford School of Medicine.

In his clinical practice, he sees patients dealing with a range of nervous system disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder, autism, attention deficit disorders, schizophrenia, mania, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders.

His laboratory develops and explores tools with which to understand how the nervous system works in the healthy situation, as well as in disorders of the mind.

Dr. Diceroth's laboratory has pioneered the development and use of what are called channel options, proteins that come from algae, which can now be introduced to the nervous systems of animals and humans in order to precisely control the activity of neurons in the brain and body with the use of light.

This is a absolutely transformative technology, because whereas certain drug treatments can often relieve certain symptoms of disorders, they often carry various side effects.

And in some individuals, often many individuals, these drug treatments simply do not work.

The channel options and their related technologies stand to transform the way that we treat psychiatric illness and various disorders of movement and perception.

In fact, just recently, the channel options were applied in a human patient to allow an adult, fully blind human being to see light for the very first time.

We also discuss Dr. Diceroth's newly released book, which is entitled, Projections, a Story of Human Emotions.

This is an absolutely remarkable book that uses stories about his interactions with his patients to teach you how the brain works in the healthy and disease state, and also reveals the motivation for and discovery of these channel options and other technologies by Carl's laboratory that are being used now to treat various disorders of the nervous system, and that in the future are certain to transform the fields of psychiatry, mental health, and health in general.

I found our conversation to be an absolutely fascinating one about how the brain functions in the healthy state and why and how it breaks down in disorders of the mind.

We also discuss the current status and future of psychedelic treatments for psychiatric illness, as well as for understanding how the brain works more generally.

We also discuss issues of consciousness, and we even delve into how somebody like Carl, who's managing a full-time clinical practice and a 40-plus person laboratory and a family of five children and is happily married, how he organizes his internal landscape, his own thinking in order to manage that immense workload and to progress forward for the sake of medicine and his pursuits in science.

I found this to be an incredible conversation I learned so much. I also learned through the course of reading Carl's book, Projections, that not only is he an accomplished psychiatrist and obviously an accomplished research scientist and a family man, but he's also a phenomenal writer.

Projections is absolutely masterfully written. It's just beautiful, and it's accessible to anybody, even if you don't have a science background.

So I hope that you'll enjoy my conversation with Carl Dyseroth as much as I did, and thank you for tuning in.

Before we begin, I want to point out that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

In my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public, I'd like to acknowledge the sponsors of today's podcast.

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