Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.

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

And now, from my discussion with Dr. Casey, I should say Dr. Halpern, welcome.

Thank you. Great to be here. You're a neurosurgeon, which I consider the astronauts of neuroscience.

For those that aren't familiar with the differences between neurosurgery, neurology, psychiatry,

you just educate us a bit. What does a neurosurgeon do? And how do you think about and conceptualize the brain?

The scope of neurosurgery is quite broad.

We take out brain tumors.

We clip aneurysms in the brain.

We take care of patients that have had traumatic brain injury, concussion, spine surgeries,

90% of what neurosurgeons do around the country, you know, taking care of herniated

discs and lumbar fusions. So, you know, the scope is the entire central nervous system,

including the peripheral nervous system, we take care of patients with carpal tunnel syndrome and

nerve disorders. Historically, neurosurgeons did everything in that domain,

but now we subspecialized, and I'm lucky to be at Penn Medicine,

where we can focus on one of these areas.

So I'm chief of stere detecting functional neurosurgery.

All I do is deep brain stimulation surgery,

and a complement to that is focus ultrasound or transcranial focus ultrasound, which is a non-invasive

way to do an ablation in the brain. Recently FDA approved, and it's FDA approved for tremor

at the moment. Deep brain stimulation is a procedure where we have to place a very thin wire

that's insulated deep into a part of the brain that's involved in Parkinson's disease,

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