FO518 Raj Shamani: w/ Neuroscientist Vidita Vaidya – Billionaire Brain & Addictions (Transcript)

The testosterone, the estrogen, the thyroid hormone, all of those hormones that go everywhere in the rest of the body and do the job of hormonal control and metabolism come out from a little stalk which has now gotten chopped off, but here’s the hypothalamus and the pituitary would emerge from here.

Comparing Rat and Goat Brains

VIDITA VAIDYA: You can also see it in the— interesting— you would see the same thing if I gave you a rat brain. Okay, so that’s a rat brain. Now, what is obvious to you first and foremost is this is smooth and this is curly and wrinkled, and that is absolutely smooth.

RAJ SHAMANI: And why is it like that?

VIDITA VAIDYA: That’s because the cortex is relatively less in size and in the skull it fits.

RAJ SHAMANI: Without having to fold.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Okay. Whereas in the goat brain, the cortex is already expanded, and for it to fit, it has to fold. So if you take out this cortex and flatten it, right, like if you flatten it out, it would be a ₹1 coin. If you take this out and flatten out, it’ll be like a small puri. If you take out a monkey brain and you do the same thing and flatten it out, it’ll be a large chapati. And if you take a human brain, human being brain, and flatten it out, it’ll be a pizza.

RAJ SHAMANI: It’ll be that big.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s big. So now, but the skull hasn’t commensurately expanded. We are not walking around with skulls that are this big, right? Like Megamind. We have small skulls. So now the stuff has to still fit. So to fit, it has to fold and fold and fold. And that’s why you have these folds, which are called gyri and sulci. And here you don’t need to fold because it’s a smooth brain. It’s called a lissencephalic brain, which is a smooth brain.

Live Brain vs. Dead Brain vs. Preserved Brain

RAJ SHAMANI: But here’s a question. These brains are preserved brains. Yes. Right. Yes. What’s the difference between a live brain, which is probably right now in my head or in some living animal versus a dead brain and versus a preserved brain?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So a dead brain, suppose we just took the brain out of the body, then there would be a lot more blood that would be immediately visible. The brain receives a large amount of your blood supply, so you would see blood, which you don’t see here at all because the blood has been removed and cleared out.

Also, it’s significantly softer because when the tissue dies, the cells start dying, and as they die, they literally dissolve away. There are all these enzymes that are chewing up stuff, so it will fall apart. If I give you a live brain, in a few minutes it’ll start falling apart.

Here, this is preserved because it’s had formalin, or just— a lot of people would have seen this in school when you go into the laboratories and you see things in these long, long, long, long jars. And you see one snake, or you see some body part. It’s been preserved. It’s been preserved by using formalin or formaldehyde, which preserves the brain. And now this will stay like this for actually years.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. But does it change anything while you’re researching or doing anything?

VIDITA VAIDYA: It does change things which we can’t easily test in this. So for example, if I want to look at RNA or DNA or look at the genes that are being switched on, I can’t do it in a preserved brain. I have to do it in a live brain.

RAJ SHAMANI: And does it shrink in size?

VIDITA VAIDYA: It does shrink a little bit because this sort of formalin, once you cross-link proteins, things become tighter. And because they become tighter, things become more tightly connected. It does shrink it a little bit. So it is a little bit smaller, but not a lot.

RAJ SHAMANI: And now that this is preserved with all these things, what can this preserved brain tell you about a living brain which is inside my mind?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Okay, so you can cut this into sections. So let’s put this fellow back right here and let’s take that. And let me show you its younger, or rather other evolutionary relative. That’s the mouse. So you get a sense of how the mouse brain—

Mouse vs. Rat: Are They the Same?

RAJ SHAMANI: Wait, mouse and rats are different?

VIDITA VAIDYA: They’re two different things. I know we all say ‘chuwa’ and we think that the chuwa is just a chuwa.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay, is it a genuine thing or am I really dumb?

VIDITA VAIDYA: You would not be the first person who’s asked this question. So people are like, rat and mouse, isn’t that just the same thing? You’ve seen a big rat.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah.

VIDITA VAIDYA: And you’ve also seen these little, but they’re not baby rats. They’re actually mice, which is a totally different species. So that is a mouse brain and that is a rat brain. And so the mouse is significantly smaller. It’s like about 25 grams, an adult mouse. And a rat, adult rat would be about 250 grams.

RAJ SHAMANI: So they are significantly bigger, right? The one you see on train stations and that’s—

VIDITA VAIDYA: The one you see on train stations is this. The one that’s probably wandering around in your house in the corner, which is eating up the food, is more likely to be a house mouse.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay. Yeah.

VIDITA VAIDYA: But that’s— you can see that it’s very similar. Even though these animals have very different sizes, they have very similar lifestyles. They’re also nocturnal. They like to spend— they come out at night. A lot of their biology is very similar, even though they are different species. And you can study a lot by studying these animals because the rules are common many times across this, this, and what’s here.

Common Rules Across Species

RAJ SHAMANI: What are common rules?

VIDITA VAIDYA: The neurons that do all the processing in the brain, they’re similar here, here, and in our nervous system. The way they’re connected and the way they are networked is different, but a lot of the basic building blocks are very similar. It’s like with a Lego box, you can make a simple thing, you can make a complicated thing, you can also make something that’s very, very— so the building blocks tend to be very, very similar. But as the complexity goes up, you get different function which emerges from these networks.

RAJ SHAMANI: But you, so you were telling me this, that when you study these brains, what do you find out about human brains?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, so let’s take a look at the microscope and then you will see what is actually inside the brain and you’ll realize that the rules are really, really quite— so let’s say I want to see how neurons function. Okay.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay, we can move this microscope closer to us.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Let’s take our gloves off.

RAJ SHAMANI: Or maybe we can just finish this. Is this done? Or you were going to cut?

VIDITA VAIDYA: I wanted to cut, so let me cut then maybe and show you that, and then we can go to the next. Okay, so I’m going to section—

RAJ SHAMANI: Actually cut it.

Exploring the Brain: Gray Matter, White Matter, and Motivation

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, I’m going to take a brain here and put it into what is called a mold. Okay, so this is a mold. So I’m just slicing the brain now. I’m just going to put it in a mold like this.

RAJ SHAMANI: This mold is for this mouse.

VIDITA VAIDYA: This mold is for a rat brain. I have a mold for a mouse brain which is right here, which smaller mold. Okay. But we’ll use the rat brain mold and I’m going to cut right here. Okay, that’s one.

RAJ SHAMANI: How difficult it is or easy is it for you to cut?

VIDITA VAIDYA: This is easy. When we want to cut really thin, you need machines. Okay. So we cut down to like fractions of a millimeter. And when we do that, then you need machines to cut at really thin levels. Right? So right now here, I’m just slicing it with— this is like a regular razor blade. Okay, that’s all it is. So I’m just slicing, slicing. Now slice. Yeah, this is proving to be tricky because this blade is not as strong as the other one.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Okay, let me just cut with this instead. All right. Yeah. Let’s just put that more. All right. Let’s take a look now.

RAJ SHAMANI: And what’s this?

VIDITA VAIDYA: All right. So now you asked me about the motivational circuitry in the brain, right? At the base of this, sitting right here. I don’t know if you can see it with this. We can try. But sitting at the base of this, this structure right here is something called the nucleus accumbens. Doesn’t matter what the name is. We all have this tendency to make very complicated names for everything in the brain. Unnecessarily. Really complicated. We could have made it a lot simpler, but you know, there were so many different structures, they got called many things. There’s a little region right here at the base, which is the region that produces and receives a lot of dopamine.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: And that’s the part of your brain that’s involved with motivation. So it’s right here at the base.

RAJ SHAMANI: And show me, like, just point it out. Where would it be?

VIDITA VAIDYA: That I will have to cut this fellow if we want to see it.

RAJ SHAMANI: Because on the bigger brain, I’ll be able— yeah, hold on. Or you just cut, or you just cut it.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Hold on.

RAJ SHAMANI: All right. It’s— I don’t know how you’re doing it, so—

VIDITA VAIDYA: So this here is— this, this— the base of this is actually the basal ganglia. This whole region is the basal ganglia. And this base region is the same region that I’m showing you here. These are all the fibers that are coming, that are collecting information from all over the cortex. This region is the cortex. Okay. This white structure that is running down here, can you see this white line?

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That’s called the internal capsule. And it carries fibers from the brain all the way down to your spinal cord. So this single neuron that projects from here could sometimes, in the case of a human being, be 1 meter long. It’s one cell, but its projections could be right from here all the way to your spinal cord. It controls your ability to sit, walk, move, etc. Right? So this, this region is that area. You can actually see it here as well. Right there at the base.

RAJ SHAMANI: This white thing.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. And the white thing running through it is the internal capsule. This is the base.

RAJ SHAMANI: So this is responsible for motivation.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Motivation. This receives innervation from the base of the brain, which is this area, which I can show.

Does the Brain Look Different in High Achievers?

RAJ SHAMANI: So what is different in people who are not motivated versus people who are?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So pretty much everyone is motivated for at least baseline level rewards. Otherwise you won’t survive.

RAJ SHAMANI: But does the brain look different of high achievers versus normal?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Not drastically so, not drastically so, but possibly in the neurochemical transmission, yes. Because in the detail of what gives you your dopamine hit, possibly. I mean, the dopamine hit that someone who’s willing to go and do the work to climb to the top of Mount Everest will likely be very different from the dopamine hit of someone who’s saying, “I’m a couch potato and I will eat the potato chips while watching someone climb Mount Everest.” It’s likely to be different, but not in the— it’ll be in the minor detail, not in the large scale. So in principle, that couch potato is also capable of absolutely getting up, doing the work and achieving that. So inherently the building blocks are there in every individual.

RAJ SHAMANI: Got it. Yeah. So it’s mostly the neurotransmitters which actually makes difference.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Neurotransmitters, the strength of signal between one neuron and another, the receptors that respond to the neurotransmitters, that level of detail changes based on what you do. So for example, let’s say someone actually trains to go to base camp. They are training and really training every single day. That training does something to your brain. True. Right. There is a difference between in principle seeing it and in practice doing it. Yeah. It’s like saying I want to be a concert pianist, but I will listen to a concert pianist. That’s not enough to become a concert pianist.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah. It’s a good example. I’ll come back to that. Okay. Because the pianist, I have something, a nuance for it. But so you’re saying that the brain of a couch potato, of somebody who’s not an achiever, is exactly the same, more or less, like in Ayurveda.

VIDITA VAIDYA: In its broad structure, 101%.

RAJ SHAMANI: But is it like heavier? Because I heard that Einstein’s brain weighs more than like a normal human being.

VIDITA VAIDYA: So Einstein’s brain is thought to have had more gyri and sulci, so more folds. Now in its detail, no one sits and counts every neuron in the brain, right?

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: We know that we have some X number of neurons, some close to just about, you know, in the billion range neurons. But the thing is that you’re not going to sit and count every neuron and see whether one individual’s brain versus another differs in the numbers. Numbers can differ though, because we know that even in rats and mice, when you put them through life experiences, especially animals that have a lot of, not challenge, but stimulating environments tend to end up with more neurons in their brain. So we do know that stimulation and the quality of environment can change the number of neurons in the brain. So there is that possibility.

RAJ SHAMANI: So the theories and like what people say, that because Einstein’s brain was heavier, it has nothing to do with his intelligence.

VIDITA VAIDYA: A little unlikely to have been just that, that it’s probably what he did with that brain and how he trained it and how he used it that made all the difference. Not to say that there aren’t inherent differences in ability. There are always some inherent differences in ability, but a lot of it is what you do with those inherent differences, and that is training. There’s no question about it. You can train the brain to do a whole bunch of things that you didn’t anticipate that you could.

And is bigger brain better? Not necessarily, because I mean, you can have a camel brain, it’s pretty huge. So now, I mean, for a camel it works beautifully, but if you and I are a human— so just bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, right? Like you can have a bigger brain. So a goat has a significantly bigger brain than a rat, but it can’t do some of the things that a rat can do, and a rat cannot do some things that a goat can do. So these brains have been evolutionarily adapted to be ideally suited for that particular species.

RAJ SHAMANI: Cheese. Got it.

VIDITA VAIDYA: For a rat, it has this huge olfactory bulb. Can you see that at the front? This structure, this is what is involved in its sense of smell. And now you know that rats are super smellers and mice are super smellers. They can smell stuff that you and I can never smell. We will not even be able to detect the odour.

RAJ SHAMANI: So will dogs have the similar thing? Will they have bigger?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Absolutely. So their olfactory system is way more complicated than ours. So if I was to say that we’ll give an award for best smeller, hands down the rat will win over you and me, right? So essentially, depending on the function we are looking at, species evolve to make the function most suitable for it. So dogs, especially bloodhounds, etc., that do a great job of smelling things, but they have complex olfactory systems. Ours has become rudimentary, and that’s because we went bipedal. So our dependence on smell is less, our dependence on vision is a lot more. We use sight to do a lot of our discrimination of the universe.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. And I have a very good smell. That’s what I would like to think.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, but hands down between you and a rat, a rat will hands down smell better than you. Of course.

RAJ SHAMANI: I am only comparing with my 10 humans.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Sure.

Gray Matter, White Matter, and Brain Fog

RAJ SHAMANI: No, fair. Okay. So you were— and there’s this one word which I’ve heard a lot, okay, which is called gray matter.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah.

RAJ SHAMANI: What is gray matter in this? Okay, this was great that you just asked— that is exactly—

VIDITA VAIDYA: This is grey matter and this is white matter.

RAJ SHAMANI: What do they do?

VIDITA VAIDYA: First of all, it’s obvious that they look different.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, grey and white.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I mean, it’s kind of pinkish because it has a little bit of fixed blood left in it. But this is grey matter and this is white matter. Grey matter is where your cells are, your neurons, your glia, all the different kinds of cells that are there in the brain. White matter is all the fibers coming out of them and going long, long distances. So, for example, if there are neurons here and there are neurons here, you’re collecting all of their fibers forming this big bundle, and then this big bundle is going, and that’s the white matter.

Most dramatically, you see it in the spinal cord, which looks almost all white. Yeah. Because it has collected all these fibers from the brain, and it’s now going to carry all that signal down to your spinal cord. That’s what’s going to allow you to move your hands. That’s going to allow you to dance. It’s going to allow you to, you know, play football. All of that is information coming from your brain through those white matter tracts all the way to your spinal cord and then going out through nerves to your periphery.

RAJ SHAMANI: So this white thing, white matter, yeah, is my, let’s say, signal carrier.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s your signal carrier.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay, exactly. And what is my grey matter?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Your grey matter is the thing that produces the signal. It’s the cell that makes the signal. That signal has to— it is useless if it stays in the brain and doesn’t go anywhere.

RAJ SHAMANI: So when they say that because we, you know, we are addicted to our screens and we keep watching endlessly. So there’s a fog in the brain and that affects gray matter. So what do they mean by that? Like, does it— do you— can you see like the white kind of thing or any fog around it when you have it? No, you can’t.

VIDITA VAIDYA: You can’t see anything changing just from chronic screen use.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay, so what is brain fog? Where does it— like, does it change anything? Does it look like—

VIDITA VAIDYA: No, it doesn’t. Brain fog essentially is referring to your inability to have clear thought, clear categorical thought, where you are just, you know, all kinds of random thoughts are just emerging at random. And you know, you’re not really able to clearly articulate whatever it is that you’re thinking about. So that’s brain fog.

Brain fog can also happen when you come out of anesthesia. So, you know, when you’re coming out of anesthesia, it’s taking a while for you to first of all be aware that you’re awake. Then you’re mumbling something. Sometimes in the morning when you wake up and you haven’t had a good night’s sleep, for a little while, it’s almost as though the system isn’t kicking in, you know, the old TVs used to have this flicker-like pattern on the TV. It’s almost like your brain is coming back on fully. So it’s that.

And if you’re continuously mindlessly consuming stuff and now you expect your brain to produce the most coherent thought, it’s not going to do that until you kick in and have your full attention on board. So in a sense, it’s that. It’s like that flicker that happens when things are not yet fully on.

The Effects of Alcohol on the Brain

RAJ SHAMANI: Got it. So it doesn’t affect the grey matter.

VIDITA VAIDYA: No, it doesn’t. But then if you, let’s say— because I mean, it doesn’t. And maybe I should say one more thing. When we say in rats and mice that an enriched environment makes for more neurons in the brain, watching mindless television is not an enriched environment by any stretch of imagination. So what you do consume has an impact on your brain for sure. So if you’re reading something interesting or even if you’re in a social conversation with someone who’s enriching your mind, 101%, that has a different effect on your brain than when you mindlessly consume stuff scrolling without really spending time to absorb the content of what you’re looking at.

RAJ SHAMANI: True, true. So you said white matter is a signal carrier, gray matter is the place where signal gets— correct. So if somebody drinks alcohol, does that affect gray matter?

VIDITA VAIDYA: It actually affects the whole signal transmission and also affects gray matter and affects white matter.

RAJ SHAMANI: So what happens? Let’s say this is brain. Correct. And in that you put a drop of alcohol.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. So let’s say there’s chronic alcohol consumption. One of the things that alcohol does is it inhibits neurons. So people think of it as, oh, I’m having the high from alcohol. But actually, alcohol is a CNS depressant. It reduces the firing of neurons, which is why over time, one of the things that you do is you notice that people find it hard to walk a straight line. They find it hard to have a clear speech. That articulation of clear speech goes, right?

Then once it gets worse, you start seeing motor abnormalities. You’re not able to balance yourself. That’s because the neurons are actually shutting off. And because one by one they start shutting off in different parts of the brain, most times people fall asleep before they have reached a really severe stage.

But chronic exposure to alcohol is damaging to the nervous system. There’s no question about it. The science on this is very, very clear, that you do kill neurons when you expose them to alcohol.

RAJ SHAMANI: So now, if this is our brain, okay. On this, when the alcohol goes, what happens? Does it change something? Does the white thing get something, or nothing changes?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So the alcohol would enter the nervous system through your bloodstream, right? Normally you’re not going to have direct alcohol exposure. It’s going to go through the bloodstream and then get to the brain. Once it gets to the brain, it goes all over the nervous system through blood supply. It goes everywhere in the brain. So there’s not a part of your brain that is not going to see alcohol.

A lot of how much alcohol will get in depends on how well your liver metabolizes the alcohol. So there are people who get drunk very quickly, and there are people who will have a larger amount of alcohol and not see the effects. It depends on the enzymes in their liver and how much alcohol you clear in your liver before it enters your bloodstream in full content. So individuals will have different levels of alcohol that their brain sees as a consequence. For example, the Japanese do very badly at metabolizing alcohol, so they tend to have a higher blood alcohol level when they have the same amount of alcohol exposure.

So when you have that kind of alcohol exposure, once a neuron sees alcohol, the GABA— there’s a neurotransmitter channel called the GABA channel that gets affected, and that actually starts showing increased signal. Neurons start reducing their firing. So let’s say I had a signal that I needed to convey from here to my hand. This hand wants to touch this, right? So I have a neuron that’s carrying the signal to my spinal cord, and now I want to move this. I want to do the same action, but there is alcohol in the nervous system. I will struggle. First of all, I might get somewhere there, but I may not be able to precisely touch it. And then over time, my ability to even move effectively is going to get hampered because the signal itself will decay since the signal-producing neuron is not working as well.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. But does any of my brain parts swell, get strong, get bigger, get smaller?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Smaller.

RAJ SHAMANI: Which one?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Your hippocampus will shrink. Your prefrontal cortex over time will shrink.

RAJ SHAMANI: What, like, show me where.

VIDITA VAIDYA: So in this part of the brain right here is your prefrontal cortex. If I turn this over, I think I should be able to show you the prefrontal cortex on the other side. Let’s see. No.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Here I can see the hippocampus in this section. Right here is a structure called the hippocampus. That structure has been beautifully named after a seahorse, but let’s forget why it was called that. The hippocampus is involved in learning. It’s involved in memory formation. It’s responsible for all the memories you build, which are explicit memories— where you grew up, where you live, things that have happened in your life. All these events get recorded in your hippocampus and then passed on to your cortex.

Those neurons are very vulnerable. They tend to die more easily and they are definitely impacted by alcohol. And you get shrinkage. First of the way the neuron looks, it shrinks, then neurons die. After they shrink, they die. So you lose neurons. And so eventually if there is chronic and large-scale usage, then over time you do tend to kill those neurons.

RAJ SHAMANI: So that hippocampus, which is responsible for your memory largely— yes, shrinking, shrinking, shrinking— then you start forgetting. That’s what alcohol does.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Strong alcohol use and alcohol use disorder will definitely take you down that way. Yeah.

Do Women Have Better Memory Than Men?

RAJ SHAMANI: So another question, slightly unrelated, but I’ll come back because you spoke about hippocampus. Do women have bigger hippocampus than men?

VIDITA VAIDYA: They have— no, actually they don’t.

RAJ SHAMANI: Why do they remember things better? Like, there’s a whole debate around—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Interesting that you’re saying this. Well, I mean, are there obvious and overt sex differences between the male and female brain? Not in the large scale, but in the detail and specific parts of the brain, there are differences. The hypothalamus has clear differences between the male and female brain, but it’s like a distribution and the distributions tend to overlap. So if you have a male distribution and you have a female distribution, there’ll be people who look identical to each other. You can’t say this is very different, but if you look at the means, there are some differences.

I think what happens is the way women are socialized. We are socialized to remember details. We’re socialized to remember birthdays. We’re socialized to remember events because we become the memory keepers of our families. So if you just look at the home, who’s the memory keeper? It’s usually the mum. She’s the one who’s remembering everyone’s birthday. She’s the one who’s remembering special dates. She’s the one who’s doing everything to make that day special.

I don’t think that’s biological as much as it is social. It has been strongly socially conditioned. And I think if you took a bunch of men and made it incentivized for them to also remember all of that, they would remember it because they remember something about their work situation.

RAJ SHAMANI: Stock market numbers and stuff like that.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s not like you are inherently— it’s just that what you are remembering tends to be different because of what has been put as an emphasis socially. But eventually the nervous system is remembering stuff.

RAJ SHAMANI: So it’s not the biology, it’s psychology mostly.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s a combination of biology overlaid by social.

White Matter and Grey Matter Up Close

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. Okay, so you were showing something. I want to show you one if you want.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. So in this you can really see the white matter and grey matter really distinct. There’s the white matter. So now it’s obvious to you. Now you understand why it’s called white matter. It’s actually as simple— somebody saw it underneath a microscope or in their hand and they’re like, okay, let’s call this grey and let’s call this white. It’s as simple as that.

RAJ SHAMANI: But why not pink matter?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So if I leave this brain for long enough and if all the blood is fully cleared from it, it starts looking a bit gray. So here on this one, it might look a little bit more than that. Let’s take this one, and in this also you’ll be able to see the white matter and the gray matter. You should be able to see the white and the gray.

RAJ SHAMANI: I can—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, so that’s what it was. It was just fixed and you saw it as white and gray, and that’s why it was called white matter.

RAJ SHAMANI: So the blood starts drying up?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, the blood is taken out because if the blood is there, you can’t see very clearly and study it very well. So you clear out the blood, which is what you do to fix the brain, and then you take a look.

Sugar, Addiction, and the Brain’s Reward Circuit

RAJ SHAMANI: And going back to what alcohol does— you explained me about the alcohol, right? Does sugar have a similar impact?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So sugar is an addictive substance like alcohol. So it hits the same motivational pathway, the nucleus accumbens— the VTA to nucleus accumbens pathway. That’s the dopamine-producing pathway in your brain. The same circuit also gets hit by sugar. So your addiction to sugar is also happening through the same circuit. Your alcohol addiction, nicotine addiction— same circuits. Gambling addiction— same circuit.

Now, the circuit is vital because without that circuit, you will not survive. Without that circuit, you will not remember that you’re thirsty and you need to drink, that you’re hungry and you need to eat. So that circuit is absolutely vital for survival, but it’s also a circuit that is very prone to getting hijacked. It gets hijacked by alcohol. It gets hijacked by drugs of abuse. It gets hijacked by sugar. It gets hijacked by gambling. And it can get hijacked by addictive conditions.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. And then they all first affect hippocampus and then the ability to actually perform on—

VIDITA VAIDYA: They affect multiple parts of the brain, including the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, accumbens, multiple circuits to different degrees.

RAJ SHAMANI: And the first thing they do is shrink?

VIDITA VAIDYA: They shrink very often the dendrites. Sometimes they cause an overgrowth of the branches in areas where you don’t want an overgrowth.

RAJ SHAMANI: Give me an example.

VIDITA VAIDYA: So for example, one of the things that they do is actually they cause an overgrowth in the area of the brain that is called the nucleus accumbens, where you now are hyper-prone to responding to the same addictive substance.

RAJ SHAMANI: Because it gets bigger.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. So it’s not just always that it’s causing a breakdown of the structure. Sometimes it’s causing it to expand.

RAJ SHAMANI: And you become hypersensitive to that.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Hypersensitive. It becomes hypersensitive to the drug. So it can become hypersensitive, it can also become tolerant, such that the same dose of the drug doesn’t give you the same response. And so now you need to take twice as much to get the same effect.

RAJ SHAMANI: Which happens most of the time. Okay, so we clear this and we’ll get the microscope.

Viewing Neurons Under the Microscope

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. So you know the question you asked me, which is, look, it’s a rat brain, it’s a mouse brain, it’s a goat brain, it’s a human brain. How can you study a human brain when you’re using a rat or a mouse or a goat? Because the building blocks, like I said, are the same. Like if you build a Lego, you can build a small little house with a Lego, you can build a huge plane with the Lego. So in here are the building blocks that I want to show you. So in here is actually a section through the rat brain in which we have stained the neurons. So you can actually see the individual neurons. I have zoomed in for you. So if you take a look through this, bring your eyes there, you should be able to see these cells. Keep both eyes open and just relax and look.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Can you see these black-like dots with these large trees? Almost looks like a forest of trees.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Right.

RAJ SHAMANI: Like just branches.

The Ethics of Animal Research in Neuroscience

VIDITA VAIDYA: Branches. That’s actually a neuron. Those are neurons in the rat cortex. Our neurons are remarkably similar. They’re bigger. So if you say this is like a 100 micron, which is like a millimeter, it’s significantly smaller. So like if you have a 100 micron neuron, these cells would be a little bit bigger, our neurons, but they’re not drastically different. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a goat brain, human brain.

RAJ SHAMANI: Just the dots will be bigger.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. The trees actually might be a little larger as well. But in its— there’s a real common architecture to these neurons. They look very similar.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: So if you want to study how a neuron works, how a neuron functions, you can’t study it easily in the human brain. So we study it in animals where we have the chance to study it well. And you can study it in a rat and mouse brain with great detail and great understanding.

RAJ SHAMANI: But when you study the effect of something, let’s say some medicine, some drug, some psychedelic, some inducing chemicals, a rat’s brain, does it show similar kind of—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yes.

RAJ SHAMANI: Like things that as a human brain?

VIDITA VAIDYA: It does.

RAJ SHAMANI: Because, so let’s say if you put like a depressed human brain and a depressed rat brain, and then you put one medicine which is making both of them happy, they give you the same, similar responses.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I will not say same because the complexity of this brain, the human brain, is definitely more than the complexity of the rat brain.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. So, and would you say that rat’s brain is the closest thing?

VIDITA VAIDYA: The closest thing to us is the non-human primates. So the gorillas and the chimps and the monkeys are the closest because they are our cousins. They are first cousins.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: In the family of life, they are our first cousins, and it’s very obvious. If you look at a bunch of monkeys, you’ll begin to realise that actually, in principle, this could be humans as well. There’s like relationships, you remember who’s whose aunt, then they remove the lice, that’s the way they have. So we also have our ways of grooming each other. A lot of like when you see a family together, people will line up and do chumpi to each other. It’s because it’s a way of indicating care. It’s our language of care. And you see very similar things in non-human primates as well.

So they are the closest to us, but they’re much more complex species and they’re not the ideal species in which to do research. First of all, they feel a lot. They’re like us with a much broader emotional spectrum. And so they come with the challenges that when you want to go inside the brain and look, it’s not ethically viable to do these experiments in non-human primates as easily. That’s not to say that nobody has. People do, some critical work is done in non-human primates, but they’re not the species of choice to study.

RAJ SHAMANI: But why? If monkey is the closest to human, right, why are we—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Because they are also the closest to human and we identify deeply with them. It’s the same way as when we look at the hierarchies of species. Species that exhibit large amount of care and a large amount of nurture are the species that will be better, na?

RAJ SHAMANI: If we do it—

VIDITA VAIDYA: I understand, but then we probably do it via imaging where we don’t have to take the life. We will not do something that takes the life of the animal, right? So this is where the boundaries of what one ethically can do. A lot of this can also be studied in the human brain. You can image the human brain, you can image the monkey brain, but you will not take the life when you go in because you’re using that animal to study, but you have an ethical framework in which you are using those animals.

RAJ SHAMANI: But here’s my little complicated question. More philosophical, rather, right? Who set this boundary that taking a life of a rat is ethical versus taking a life of a monkey is not ethical? So if it’s animal, it has to be animal.

VIDITA VAIDYA: We tend to apply this based on sentience and understanding of consciousness. We know that we are conscious, right? We now are attributing an understanding of consciousness to other species, species that are closer to us in the complexity of their brains, like whales, dolphins, monkeys, chimps, gorillas. The complexity of their nervous system is much closer to us. And so we attribute to them greater understanding of complex emotions and consciousness-like states, which we do not attribute so much to a rat.

Now that may be a little bit of an unfair categorization because rats also show empathy. They can also show altruistic behavior and they do feel, it’s not like they don’t feel, right? So there is this awareness that we have. However, somewhere in the history of time, we could have also said, let’s just study flies, which also have complex nervous systems. They fly, etc. They have a much shorter lifespan. And people do study in worm, we study in fly, but we can’t study the mammalian brain in worm and fly. And the mammalian brain is much more closer to us because we are mammals.

So it was a via media. Is it the best solution? No, but it is a via media solution that the community has come up with, at the same time saying that there will still be strict ethical oversight over all experiments. All experiments have ethical clearances that they have to go through. But it’s a very fair question and it’s one which is difficult to deal with and a difficult one to answer. Because in a sense, you’re saying we are putting human life as a higher value than the life of the animal that we are taking to be able to study, right?

RAJ SHAMANI: So let’s say we have put in human as— because every species is selfish and they think their species is the top-level species, right? You could see that in multiple other species and animals as well. They would, even totally unrelated animals, they’ll save their other animals similarly and attack humans, right? So let’s say we put humans at the top because we are humans, we’re biased. But how do we decide hierarchy of what are the animals who are going to be probably worth taking life versus not?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Probably in terms of the complexity of their nervous system and the tendency of those species to do a great deal of nurture and care. So when you look at monkeys and non-human primates, there’s a lot of community social architecture where they exhibit a lot. They also mourn, very visibly mourn. Elephants very visibly mourn. That is not to say that a rodent doesn’t feel that kind of pain and suffering, but it’s not as visible, perhaps.

RAJ SHAMANI: But do they feel?

VIDITA VAIDYA: They definitely feel.

RAJ SHAMANI: They definitely feel. Like if a rat—

VIDITA VAIDYA: If it sees another animal go through pain, it feels it. There’s something called witness element, and there’s witness stress, and that is experienced even by rodents.

RAJ SHAMANI: So two unrelated rats, you put both of them in a lab, and one rat sees another rat going through extreme pain and torture, this rat will feel?

VIDITA VAIDYA: It will feel it.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. Very— just, I don’t know which angle we’ve taken the podcast, but I find it very interesting. And so goat brain, you said you study goat brain because it’s the closest. I mean, you can see in terms of shape and size.

VIDITA VAIDYA: We study the rat and the mouse most in my laboratory.

RAJ SHAMANI: So you got today rat, mouse, and goat. Why goat?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Goat because it’ll look most to someone who has never seen a brain like something that they imagine the human brain to look like. So if I have to say, here Raj, here’s a brain, I’m showing you a brain, and can you see this immediately think of something you remember from when you were in school, then the goat brain immediately evokes that memory. But if I show you a rat and mouse brain, you’ll say, that’s interesting, but it doesn’t look like anything.

That’s why I got the goat brain also, so that you may see that the building blocks are similar. It doesn’t matter which species you’re studying, the building blocks are very, very similar. And by studying the building blocks, you can understand much about what is happening in our brain.

Examining Brain Cells: Staining and the Hippocampus

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay, you were showing me this. What is this?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So now I showed you what the cortex looks like, with a very old kind of technique called Golgi staining. And what I’m going to do now is show you what I think I should have in this. Wow, you did a good job! You did that automatically. Okay, let me just see if I can zoom and show you. Yeah, so you know we were talking about gray matter and white matter, right? So gray matter, I told you, is the place where all the cells are. So now if I want to see the cells, is there a way I can stain the cells? So in this, there’s a Nissl stain, which allows you to stain the cell body.

RAJ SHAMANI: What is Nissl stain?

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s just a stain that binds to RNA granules inside cells.

RAJ SHAMANI: I still didn’t get it.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s a chemical that will go and bind to a certain kind of a molecule within your cell, and because of that, it’ll stain all these cells. And so they end up staining a nice blue.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: So you can see them. They’ll be dark blue, and they look circular because these cells are largely either circular, pyramidal, or oval or elliptical.

RAJ SHAMANI: So this is how you find out cells?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, this is in the hippocampus.

RAJ SHAMANI: You study these. So there is like one purple thingy I see, and then there’s a blue thing.

VIDITA VAIDYA: The blue thingy is what you’re looking at. Those blue cells, can you see them all like next to each other? They look like grapes almost next to each other. They’re all next to each other, and that’s the hippocampus.

RAJ SHAMANI: This is the sort—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, yeah, exactly, like blue, blue, blue, blue dots next to each other.

RAJ SHAMANI: But then I see like this one sort of like one thing coming out as well.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, that’s an air bubble that has happened. That is not a good slide. It’s a bubble, so ignore the—

RAJ SHAMANI: I’m just supposed to see the blue thing, which almost looks like freckles.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, it looks like freckles. It’s exactly that. But those are the cells in the hippocampus. That’s your memory-making structure in the brain.

RAJ SHAMANI: So these like thousands or maybe millions of these freckles is memory?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Memory. That’s where your memory is made. So you need the hippocampus to make new memories.

RAJ SHAMANI: So do like each one of them actually form a memory in my head?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So that’s an interesting question. There’s a hypothesis called the formation of engrams.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: And I’ll tell you what this engram formation is. It’s an idea that’s not that new, but it’s been something people have been working on very closely in the last 10 years. So let’s say I come to this room right now. I have this room in which I see Raj Shamani opposite me. I see it says Figuring Out. I have this bottle of water. I’m creating a memory of this time, of this individual. And I will now walk away from here.

The next time I come back here, if that memory has been strongly made, it will activate certain cells in my brain that have encoded this memory, right? So let’s say I have cells A, B, C, D, E, F, G in that part of the brain that encode this memory. Then I go away. I’m not coming back here immediately. One week later, you happen to say, why don’t you come over to the studio? And I come over and then those same cells get reactivated because that memory has formed. So that’s called an engram. It’s the physical map of where the memory is stored in my brain.

Now let’s imagine I go to somebody else’s studio. Now that studio happens to have the exact same table, the exact same whatever, maybe doesn’t have Raj Shamani, something but very similar.

RAJ SHAMANI: Similar, okay. Same colour, same thing.

How Memory Works: Engrams, Patterns, and the Brain’s Shortcuts

VIDITA VAIDYA: Very similar. And I get a partial activation of the engram. And then I think, oh, maybe I’ve been here before, which is actually not true. I haven’t been there. But because it overlapped so much with something that I already had a memory of, I get this weird feeling of déjà vu where I’m like, I think I’ve been here before, but I actually haven’t. It’s just that my brain thinks I’ve been here because there’s this reactivation of this engram.

So this partial activation of the engram is enough to bring back the whole thing. So our brain is something, it’s a pattern completer. It wants to take partial information and finish the information. So it takes a little bit of information, says, “Ah, I think I’ve seen this.” And now let me finish the whole story in my head. It’s like how we don’t have the patience to hear the whole story. You start telling me a story and I’m like, “But I know where you’re going with this. Now don’t finish the story. I understood what you’re saying.”

So that tendency of our brain is to try to take shortcuts. We’re shortcut-making. We want to finish quickly, quickly, kaatham karo. Like, let’s get this done and let me get all the information out partially and complete the whole picture because I think mota moti, I will get it mostly, right? And 95% of the time you’ll get away with it also because you may get it broadly, but sometimes in the detail you will get it wrong. And when you get it wrong in the detail, the only way to correct that is by slowing it down. You have to slow it down, take the time to learn it.

So for example, let’s say you take an exam. Let’s say you have an exam to do tomorrow, and you’ve decided you’re going to mug everything that is there today. And broadly, you may get some part of it correct the next day. Two weeks later, I ask you to remember anything, you’ve forgotten everything. Because it was short-term memory, and you have not really learnt it. You have just memorised it enough to produce something the next day and vomit it out. And then your brain says, now I’m not wasting any space on all this because you have not taken the time to properly learn it.

So what you remember as short-term, quickly done, shortcut associated doesn’t last. The brain is not wasting too much. So even when you go back into school, the few subjects that you really love and you really learnt, you learnt well, you’ll feel comfortable with. A lot of other stuff you’ve just memorised.

RAJ SHAMANI: I have no idea.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Forgotten. You’ve just vomited it out and it’s now blank. Like if somebody asks you, say, did I ever really study that? I don’t remember studying this.

RAJ SHAMANI: But do they get stored in these blue dots?

VIDITA VAIDYA: They do get stored in the strength of the connections between these two dots. So those — right now you’re seeing only the blue dots. You’re not seeing the nerve connections between the dots. For that, you need a different kind of stain. The stain I showed you before showed all these fibers coming out, right? So those are the axons and the dendrites. That’s where all the connections are made between these cells.

Now, if I take my skin cells, they don’t have these kinds of branches. They’re just cells stuck next to each other. They’re epithelial clear cells. But cells in the brain produce their functions by talking to each other. It’s all communication. It’s a signal that I send to you and you receive the signal. I send the signal through my axon if I was a cell, and if you were a neuron also, you were receiving it through your dendrites. So this is how we are communicating. It is in the communication that the memory is eventually strengthened and maintained.

Types of Memory: Procedural vs. Explicit

RAJ SHAMANI: Very interesting. So explain me in simple terms, as if I have no clue and you’re telling me for the first time in the most layman terms. Don’t be scientific. Tell me how memory is formed. And where is it from? Like, what happens?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Okay, so there are different kinds of memories. There’s a memory of you learning how to ride a bicycle, right?

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah.

VIDITA VAIDYA: You learned how to ride a bicycle. That is done. That’s a procedural memory. That’s a different part of your brain that processes procedural memories. When you learned how to walk, when you learned how to ride a bicycle, when you learned how to swim. That’s one kind of memory. How you learned how to dance, maybe a beautiful sequence. These are all procedural memories. They’re not memories that you consider the explicit memories.

Explicit memories are memories where you and I can describe something. You can tell me, yesterday I went out for a meal with this person. This is what I ate. That’s your memory of what happened yesterday. You can also tell me that 20 years ago, this was what I ate in the gully outside my school, and this was how the vada pav tasted or whatever, right? Those are explicit memories. Now these are two different classes of memories. They also tend to be processed by different parts of the brain.

Now, one memory — the learning how to ride a bicycle. Once you learned how to ride a bicycle, you’re not remembering every single time, how did I ride the bicycle? You just get on and you ride. It’s the same way as you learned how to walk. Every time you’re not remembering, to walk, I need to move my foot like this, etc. You just do it. And that’s all procedural.

But explicit memories — it is in the retelling of the memory that the memory becomes actually relevant.

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: If I have a memory and I never talk about it ever, over time, the memories will fade. It is in my description of the memories that they get a life.

RAJ SHAMANI: Hmm.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Either openly by my talking about it or by my thinking about it. I can think about it and keep that memory alive as well. So sometimes you close your eyes and you imagine someone you loved, a parent, a family member who’s no more, but you can almost imagine their face and it comes back up because it’s a visual memory that you’re recreating. And some people are very visual and they can actually close their eyes and bring back the memory of the person. But those memories are kept alive by your brain or when you talk about something explicit. Those are explicit memories.

The Role of the Hippocampus: The Case of Henry Molaison

VIDITA VAIDYA: They are actually formed — all explicit memories appear to be formed involving the hippocampus. So we need the hippocampus for explicit memories. And the way we understood this was actually because of a person called HM. HM was a guy called Henry Molaison. He had severe seizures. He just was seizing so badly and there was no medication or treatment for it. So the surgeon went in and took out the part of the brain that was producing the seizures because the seizures were so severe he couldn’t function. But in the process, the part of the brain that was producing it was the hippocampus. So they took out the hippocampus bilaterally, and now Henry could not make any new memories.

Old memories which had distributed out of the hippocampus were still there, but all the new memories — nothing new could be formed. So let’s say I was a doctor and you are Henry. I come and say, hi Henry, how are you today? Shall we talk about something? Then tomorrow I come again, I have to introduce myself because you have no idea who I am. You have made no memory of either me or this interaction. But if I try to teach you to draw something, you’ll learn it and you get better and better at drawing it because procedural memory is still okay.

So that’s when we first learned that the hippocampus is so important for forming memories. So our idea of location and space and people and events is encoded first in the hippocampus. Then from there it goes to being distributed in many different — it’s like almost a bank teller machine. You need to have the hippocampus to get the memory. After that, you don’t keep everything in the hippocampus, you distribute it. So you send it to many other parts of the cortex. So now it lives in many different distributed places.

And that’s why old memories, which are distributed to many locations, tend to be the last to go. So when you have someone who’s much older in your family who has Alzheimer’s or has cognitive impairments or dementia, they will sometimes remember the most excruciatingly small detail about some old memory, but they don’t remember who you are. As recent as what has happened yesterday, they don’t remember. It’s because that memory is relatively fresh and hasn’t had a chance to become an old, stable, consolidated memory that’s distributed to many locations in the brain.

Memory in Action: A Real-Life Example

RAJ SHAMANI: True, true. I’ve seen this live in one of my family members. They went through an episode for about 6-7 days where they had — like very, I don’t know if you call it stroke or like some sort of episode where they forgot who the family members were. And they were like, who’s this person? But next morning, they just — and everybody in the family was very shocked that, oh, maybe they’ve forgotten everything and now this is the end. And you know how family reacts the first time. Next morning, that person woke up at the exact same time when they wake up. They got up, they started cooking in an exact proper way as if everything was normal, and they served it to the 5 people who they remembered.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, the brain is a very complex —

RAJ SHAMANI: It’s like that person’s brain remembered how to cook, where the food is, where the salt is, like all of that thing, but they couldn’t remember who was this person.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Memory. When you dance or you sing or you sometimes even produce some piece which involves movement, you’re not thinking that now iske baad ye karna hai, then I have to do this. Let’s say someone who’s been doing Bharatanatyam for multiple years, there’s so many different dances. Do you remember which is the next step? It’s become muscle memory, right? When we call something becoming muscle memory, it’s because it’s almost as though it’s produced automatically. So for many people who would be going to the kitchen every day doing the same ritual, putting something, doing something, that repeated action is almost muscle memory. It’s not, now I have to remember that I have to take this out and then do this.

RAJ SHAMANI: So when does this normal explicit memory become muscle memory?

How Memories Consolidate and Why Emotion Matters

VIDITA VAIDYA: So procedural memories become muscle memories very easily. That’s the ones that involve movement. Explicit memories get distributed and don’t become muscle memories, but they get distributed to multiple parts of your cortex. They become — how to put it — they’re more stable because they’ve had time to marinate and distribute to many parts of the brain. So very old memories, which are very strong memories, tend to get distributed like this.

But let me ask you a question. You went to school in Indore. You had a favourite teacher? You remember your favourite teacher? You remember the person you hated the most in school who was a bad teacher? Do you remember all the people who you were neutral towards?

RAJ SHAMANI: No, I don’t remember half of their names. I’m finding it hard. Like, who were the — apart from 5 teachers who I knew, I don’t even know who were the other teachers. Precisely.

VIDITA VAIDYA: So this is a good exercise which one can easily do, that if you go back 20 years, 25 years, sometimes 10 years, who do you remember from a large setting where there were many people? You tend to remember the people you really liked, tend to remember the people you really disliked. The people you’re neutral to, you just forget. So emotionally charged memories — you remember anything that has emotion. Charge good, charge bad, doesn’t matter.

RAJ SHAMANI: Negative charge or positive charge.

VIDITA VAIDYA: You basically need meaning to remember the memory. It has to matter. Things that don’t matter, your brain is not — so for example, you’re not going to remember formulae in maths if they’re not changing your life every day. If they’re changing your life every day, you will remember it. But otherwise, why are you going to remember? This is just going to go out of your brain.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. So, but then why are some people or some kids or some individuals so good with their memory and they remember everything versus some individuals are not?

Memory, Talent, and the Power of Positive Reinforcement

VIDITA VAIDYA: So there are things where people talk about eidetic memory or photographic memory where you actually look at a page and now you remember it and the next day you just remember the page. That’s— some of it is training, some of it is inherent capabilities also. Like, for example, someone is a really good dancer versus not. Someone’s really good at having eye hand-eye coordination, and that’s why they can play. So there will be some inherent differences, but a lot of it is once you discover a talent, you tend to hone it. You tend to hone it.

When you are good at something and you realize this is actually a positive reward for me because I feel good at it, it’s a self-perpetuating thing. The minute you find something you’re good at and it gives you a sense of pleasure and a sense of reward that you have done well at it, you tend to go and repeat it.

RAJ SHAMANI: So are you telling me that if there is a kid in a family, and let’s say two kids who have exactly the same identical biology and brain — two kids. One kid, you tell that kid again and again, “You’re dumb, you can’t remember everything,” again and again every day for a year. And one kid, you keep telling every day, “You’re intelligent, you remember — you’re such a brilliant kid, you have sharp memory and you remember everything.” Regardless of what they do, if you keep telling them, you think the one you’re telling nice things will end up becoming better at memory than versus not? 101%.

VIDITA VAIDYA: There’s no doubt about it. Because the kids would— the stress associated with continuously being negated and continuously being told you’re incapable has a clear impact. I’m not saying it will be black or white, but there’s no question that if you started with two individuals with identical capability and then the environment pushed one to have positive reinforcement and the other to have continuous negative reinforcement, there’s no doubt that you will drive a differential.

RAJ SHAMANI: And can they do that in adults as well?

VIDITA VAIDYA: To a lesser extent, but absolutely. To a lesser extent, because the brain is much more plastic and much more open to change in a younger nervous system. So your first 25 years of your life, that’s a window in which there’s much more plasticity than in the second 25 and the last 25. It’s downhill after that first 25. It moves in the other direction. So plasticity is reducing in the range of what it can do.

So when I say plasticity, it means the ability of your brain to change, to effectively change in response to environment. Our brain — like I said, its job is to take in information from the environment and make change to be able to adapt better to the environment. The world. That’s what it does.

The Athlete’s Brain: Muscle Memory and Mirror Neurons

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting, very, very interesting. But tell me how — okay, coming to high achievers. And this is the most fascinating thing which I love doing, right? So I observe a lot of athletes, just for the fun of it — like how do they perform, how do they come to the court, what do they do in practice, and all the videos I can find out, right? There’s one identical thing you will find out in, I think, thousands of Olympic athletes. And you will see that probably — you know it already — is when you look at all the runners or anyone, the moment there is like this — yeah, the gun, right? The body moves. Have you seen it? Like it’s a prep. It’s a prep, right?

VIDITA VAIDYA: There’s an internal prep of the brain before anything actually happens.

RAJ SHAMANI: So what I was seeing — I was looking at this one runner whose race was next. Next, okay, and he was in the stands and he was watching. This is the Olympics going on, and I think it was like a 400-meter race and next was 100 meters, something like that. This guy was standing here, the race was there, and they put a gun trigger for that race, but this guy in the stand — he was in a resting mode — his body moved. Totally, and just his body took a reaction. So why did that happen? Like, what is going on? How has it become muscle memory that a gunshot, which will probably scare some people or make them nervous or make them prep — this guy can’t think of anything and just moving like this.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That’s because that entire sequence has probably been practiced in his mind over and over and over again. It’s the same with someone like a concert pianist. If you are hearing — so I’ll give you a good example because a concert pianist is actually a good way of — so when you move your fingers in a particular way, those individual fingers have representations in the brain. And so that part of the brain is getting active as you’re moving that finger. And even before you move the finger, there’s something called the premotor, which is before the sequence starts, you imagine it. And you start playing.

Now let’s say I’m a concert pianist and you are playing the same sequence. I’m not even moving my fingers. I’m listening in the audience. I’m playing out the whole sequence in my premotor cortex because I know how the sequence will be played. I have practiced it so much that you are playing the music — even before you hit the key — will activate my brain to start producing the exact same sequence. And this is something called mirror neurons. We have the capability of imagining another’s actions, and before they perform the action, we predict what they’re going to do.

So this is the prediction system that we have, which is rather unique and special to primates. Primates seem to have this mirror neuron system really developed where we actually predict the other’s action, which helps you, right? It’s a shortcut. Let’s say you and I are sitting. If I have a good idea of how you’re going to behave, what you’re going to do, then it makes this conversation so much easier. It flows. Because I’m predicting what you’re going to do. And that’s what we’re doing in all social interactions. We’re mimicking the other person’s potential action by imagining what they likely will do.

And we tend to do this better with those whom we understand better. So you’re Indian, I’m Indian, we have a common shared vocabulary of an understanding of our country, our culture. So it’s an ease. Let’s say you stick me with someone from Indonesia and they don’t speak English or they don’t speak Hindi or they don’t speak whatever common language — we will struggle initially because our ability to predict the other person’s actions has gone because cultural context has moved away.

This is why we find it easier to hang out with our own. The problem with that is it also comes with a negative, which is that we have an implicit bias to preferring people who sound like us, look like us, behave like us, and we find it harder to deal with individuals who don’t sound at all like us, who behave very differently from us, and that sometimes can create a bias.

Three Mental Strategies of Ultra-High Achievers

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. I’ll tell you 3 processes of ultra-high achievers.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Tell me what’s going on in their brain.

RAJ SHAMANI: Because all three of them have won tremendously, thousands of times in their life. One is Michael Jordan, one is Michael Phelps, and the third is Napoleon. All three, they have different processes. Because you said that things that we experience and things that we do, they either become procedural memory or explicit memory. And when we keep repeating it again and again, the stories in our brain again and again, it ends up becoming a very strong memory, right? That’s how we end up winning or losing in some sort, or that affects our ability to perform a task.

So all three people — Michael Jordan, what he does, he would imagine in his brain throwing a basket, right? He says that everything in life happens twice, one inside your brain and then in reality. So it has already happened. So he would practice the whole match. He would visualize it — that I’m throwing this. So that’s one process.

Second is Michael Phelps. What he used to do for years, since the time he started training till he actually ended up winning almost every race in the world — every night before sleeping, he used to see himself winning, not the process. So Michael Jordan is looking at process — “I’m getting the pass from here, I’m doing this.” Phelps is only seeing himself winning. Like, “This is what I’ve won. After winning, I’ve done this. Right before winning, this is how my water is.” And he would see himself winning in different situations. Like, if my goggles broke and water got in, how do I win? If my start is late, it’s just win.

And the third process is Napoleon. Before every big battle, he would sit down and he would imagine himself losing. “What are the ways that I can die today?”

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, it’s a survival thing, right?

RAJ SHAMANI: So he would just see himself dying from all the ways, and that’s why he would never die. He would win almost every battle because he’s eliminated in his head — “These are maybe 23 ways I’m going to die today, and I’m going to protect myself from those 23.” All 3 different ways, all 3 are somehow actually practicing memory in your head to end up winning. What is going on in their brains? Are all 3 activating different things or the same?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Likely activating different things. The first example of Michael Jordan — he’s activating every single circuit of practice, either the real practice or the created practice in his nervous system. So he’s highly process-driven. It’s like, “I’m going to remember how it feels to shoot the 3-pointer. How am I going to do this over and over and over again?” And clearly the love of the game is obvious in him. He has inspired multiple people to fall in love with the game as well, right? So I think that is very process-oriented.

Michael Phelps has also got insane bodily advantages — that span. I mean, there’s a reason he was called the Albatross. There’s the span itself. So there’s a physical advantage. But it’s interesting that he’s imagining — so it’s almost like a positive reinforcement. His goal is that “I want to win this race,” and he’s reinforcing that positivity in him over and over again, but clearly not simultaneously saying that if he doesn’t win, he gives up. That doesn’t seem to be part of the dialogue. It’s, “I’m going after this no matter what the circumstance. My goggles break, something isn’t working perfectly, I’m still going to give it everything I’ve got.”

RAJ SHAMANI: So the thought of losing doesn’t occur. What is going on in his brain?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Absolutely. In a sense, he’s just ideating the outcome for himself, right? It’s like, “I’m convinced I’m going to do this.” Largely, it turned out to be correct. I mean, someone can ideate this and it may not work out because they have not done the work. It’s also Michael Phelps, right? I mean, I could sit here and say I also want to win the Olympics, but if I get into the pool, I will not even cross — so there is a realistic element to his ideation. It’s not just a pipe dream. It’s someone who’s performing at the top of their game, and then he’s saying, “I’m going to ideate the best outcome possible.” So that’s very realistically based.

But human beings have done this over and over again. I mean, there are examples of saying, “I want to go to the moon.” We wouldn’t have believed we could have gone to the moon or gone to the other side of the moon and even seen anything. And we’ve done that, right, as a species. So clearly, pushing yourself that it is possible to do what feels like the impossible is one way of motivating yourself to that goal.

In the case of Napoleon, I think he’s — based on this description — performing out of fear. It’s a “How do I survive?” And those were survival circumstances. If you don’t have that instinct, you are going to be dead on a battlefield, especially a battlefield of that era. So I think that’s operating out of a fear mentality. And certainly every description of him in history indicates that it was a man who would use every possible manipulative tool available to him in his arsenal to ensure that he survives. So it was one who was a pragmatist almost in a sense, right? “How do I not be the one who’s taken out on this battlefield?” That’s the approach.

They’re very different. I don’t think the first two are operating from fear. The last one I think is operating from fear, but is still successful despite that because of the kind of situation he’s in. So which one is the one that gets the sustained admiration is also interesting from our species, right?

RAJ SHAMANI: No one after 50 years, no one.

VIDITA VAIDYA: After 50 years, no one. Napoleon is more than 50 years. So it’s interesting because—

RAJ SHAMANI: So it’s also because they had influence on writings. These guys don’t have an influence on writing. So we can’t—

The Science of Winning: Jordan, Phelps, and Napoleon

VIDITA VAIDYA: History is always written by the winners. That’s always unfortunately the case. History is also written by dominant voices, you know, culturally it’s always been written by dominant voices.

RAJ SHAMANI: So one is operating out of process, one is operating out of ideating a situation for himself, and one is operating out of fear. Are they operating from different parts of their brain? Likely. What is activating in case of Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, and Napoleon?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So I would imagine that in the procedural situation, you’re activating the circuits that control that action. Let’s say you’re imagining a 3-pointer over and over and over again. You have a sequence, a muscle sequence that gets activated. Your motor cortex gets activated, then your spinal column, then you have to get your position of your body just right.

And you’ve practiced it so many times that you can probably think that sequence out without doing it. And if you keep activating that and then you practice it multiple times, it is eventually when you are in that situation, it’s almost automatic. It feels almost automatic. So you’re actually driving probably the procedural memories I was telling you about.

RAJ SHAMANI: So is it like—

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s the striatum. It’s this part of the brain. So there is a— in this, it is invisible, but there’s a region here which underneath this— so like, if you were— you’re now cutting through half the brain like this. Underneath this, there’s a region called the striatum. The striatum and the basal ganglia circuitry are what do the procedural learning. That’s a circuit that’s activated in Michael Jordan’s brain when he’s doing that.

And that activates a cerebral cortex, premotor and motor. From the motor cortex, it goes all the way down through the spinal column, all the way to the muscles of his arms and back, eventually driving the release of the ball. So it’s that sequence, and the sequence is multiple neurons connected with each other that get activated. That now you’re doing it without shooting the ball, and you’re doing it repeatedly over and over again. That’s how eventually also you improve that circuit.

So you can drive a circuit by thinking it through over and over again. And so in some sense, that’s also how you memorize something. That’s also how you learn something over a period of time. So you can also do it for procedural memory as well.

RAJ SHAMANI: So just by thinking about it, he’s actually getting better. Okay. And with Phelps, what is he activating?

VIDITA VAIDYA: With Phelps, he’s likely activating his prefrontal cortex to override negative outcomes. So his limbic cortex would say, what the heck would happen if my goggles broke halfway through and I have water in my eyes, right? So now that’s a negative outcome. He’s activating probably the prefrontal cortex, which would then say, despite that negative outcome, you are going to be able to do this.

So you’re driving circuits in the brain that are giving you control over the responses that would happen if an emergency should happen. Let’s say your goggles do break. Everybody else has goggles and they’re getting to their goal. You now have to function with something that has given you a handicap in that situation. How do you not let that handicap become a serious handicap? So you’ve ideated and imagined that handicap already before it occurs, and you’ve allowed yourself to say, if this were to happen, this is how I will handle it.

So in some sense, think about it like— let’s say you’re going for an exam and you have an exam for which you’ve studied, but you are now convinced yourself you’ll forget everything you’ve studied. And when you go into the room, everything will come out of your brain and you will not be able to write a single word because you’re so nervous. How do you prepare yourself for that possibility?

You tell yourself that if that was to arise, how am I going to calm myself down so that I can at least handle one or two? So if you practice this to yourself, you’d say, in my entire paper, there’ll be at least one question I can answer. 100-mark paper. I can’t answer all 100. I’ll find one question I can answer. Should I feel so nervous, I will find the one question I can answer and answer it.

And you’ve prepared yourself before that situation to tackle that. Hopefully then you say, okay, I answered one question. Maybe the second question I’ll find in my 100 which I can still answer. Even if I can’t answer it very well, I can answer. That should have brought your calmness in enough that it will give you some room to tackle what would have been impossible otherwise. You’ve been paralyzed by the hardest question and not even attempt counted one.

So it’s in a sense preparing yourself for the worst possible outcome, that I forgot everything. How will I handle such a situation? It’s like when you go on stage and you have a fear of public speaking, and a paralytic fear of public speaking. You will never be able to get over that unless somewhere you calm yourself by saying, if I have to do this, I will look at the one friendly face in the audience that is smiling back at me, and I will talk like I’m having a conversation with that one person, imagine the rest of the room, there’s nobody.

So you tell yourself what you will do should that situation arise. And I think that is Michael Phelps’ strategy, which is that should something go wrong, this is how I’m going to handle it.

Silencing the Inner Voice of Doubt

RAJ SHAMANI: So if in every brain and every human being, largely, there is a voice which is saying that you are going to win, there’s a voice which is saying this is not for you, you will f* up, you will mess up, you will forget everything, and you’re not born for this, look at your situation. And there’s this voice which is actually killing you down, like the little voice, right? So just by thinking about winning again and again with 20 different bad situations in your brain can actually kill this voice?

VIDITA VAIDYA: I think it can help control it. I don’t think it can kill the voice. If that voice is there and it has been nurtured, and believe me, many people nurture the voice, either you nurture it or other people in your life nurture that voice, which is to say that something isn’t doable, something isn’t possible, it’s improbable, why are you even bothering to try? So either you will do it or someone in your circle will do it.

It may exist, but if you tell yourself that I’m going to give it the best possible shot that I can, then in principle, you can control that voice. I don’t think you can get rid of it completely, because it’s likely a little bit inherent. And some of it is also survival. Like, let’s say tomorrow I want to climb Mount Everest, but I am scared of heights. Then I may not necessarily be the best person to climb Mount Everest. So it is also protecting me that that little voice is also telling me, maybe you just watch somebody climb Mount Everest, and maybe you don’t attempt to do it, right? This is not your cup of tea.

But it is also the same voice that’s telling me, don’t take on this research problem because this is too difficult for you to ask. And that then I have to silence because that then harms my ability to ask that research question. I want to push that boundary of knowledge. I want to try that even if it’s going to be possibly a failure. I don’t want to not try. I want to give it the shot that I have. Then I have to silence that voice.

So that voice, sometimes it’s protective and sometimes it’s saving you from doing something you shouldn’t do. And sometimes it’s just a deterrent and it’s not letting you move forward. So you have to have the ability to control it to that degree.

Napoleon and the Amygdala: Operating from Fear

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah. Interesting. And in the last case, which was Napoleon’s case, where is he operating from?

VIDITA VAIDYA: I think he’s operating from the amygdala. So there’s the— this is the hippocampus. Right in front of the hippocampus is this almond-shaped structure called the amygdala, which is your fear, threat, safety emotion processing center. It’s a vital center. Without this, you don’t survive because you won’t fight or flight. Absolute fight or flight. Like if you’re in the middle of some prairie and some lion comes to eat you up, you need to run and or hide, right? One of the two.

So the amygdala is vital for processing threats. It’s also a structure that is critical for you to detect safety. It’s not just a threat processing center. It also does safety detection, emotional detection, emotional valence of memories, importance of memories. I think he’s operating from there because using that, he’s saying, I’m going to eliminate everything that might potentially allow me to not survive, and I’m going to find all the safety things that are going to help me survive this.

So it is operating from your limbic nervous system, this part of your— what people like to call the reptilian brain. But basically it’s your survival processing, emotion threat detection system, which evolution has maintained in all mammals because without that you don’t live to tell the tale.

But then you also have been given this massive cerebral cortex, which you can see the size of the cerebral cortex in the rat brain. That was that smooth structure I showed you. And you can see this huge cerebral cortex in the human. What that has done is it’s given you ability to do top-down control of all these circuits. That’s your positive voice that’s going to tell you, I’m not going to be a victim to this set of circumstances as well. It’s the same circuit that’s telling you, 10 people told me I’m incapable of doing this, I’m going to tell myself I’m going to try, right? It’s still that very circuit.

So this huge expansion has come with some massive benefits for us as a species. So we should use it. This is where poetry, philosophy, creativity, etc., emerges.

Finding Your Winning Style: A Framework

RAJ SHAMANI: So now explain me, if somebody is watching this, okay, and they want to find out what kind of winner they can be, because in theory, all three winners activated a different part of their brain and kept telling them that story based on probably their personality or their biology or the structure of or social environment, right? How can I find out which one will work for me?

VIDITA VAIDYA: I would say go for the most sustainable, and the most sustainable is when you fall in love with doing something. You have to like what you do. That is the single most sustainable way of the long-term likelihood that you will achieve something.

RAJ SHAMANI: But can I find out? Can I find out that do I love fighting my fears? Do I love being process-driven because I love the process? Or do I just love being delusional about just winning? Because all three processes—

VIDITA VAIDYA: I think you can figure it out if you watch your patterns of behavior and look back at what you did and what were your moments where you really felt that you got to some goal. Let’s say you set some goal and you achieved it, and over a life of 20, 30 years, you’ll be able to figure out where that goal was achieved in a way that you felt, hey, I not only enjoyed the process, I also love the goal that I eventually got to. And what was it that took me to getting there? And what’s the pattern of behavior I have used?

My suggestion is not to function from fear. The last, in my opinion, is the worst of those three examples.

RAJ SHAMANI: You will get paranoid.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Because you will just get to said goal, but you will fry your brain in the process. And I’m not so sure that that’s worth it. Because the costs of that eventually catch up and they tend to catch up as you age. Because if you continuously drive your fear circuit and your stress response pathways, you will eventually drive your brain towards a state which is not a very healthy state.

The Jordan and Phelps examples are far better examples because they’re not operating from fear. They are different styles, no question about it, but they’re not operating from fear. So I would say long-term sustained success cannot come from fear. This would be my general view that fear is not a good driver of that.

RAJ SHAMANI: Can you tell me like a framework or a question or an exercise for me and my viewers to ask ourselves right now so that we can find out at least largely or closely which process will work for us?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Okay, I would first say find out what you thoroughly have enjoyed doing. First, you have to find out what you really enjoy doing, and when you enjoy doing it, sometimes it leaves you feeling happy enough to want to share it with other people and to talk about it. Let’s say you read something and you were so excited by it because you read it that you had to share it with 3, 4 people immediately and say, I read something so interesting, or I did something that was so interesting and I want to share it with people I care about.

So that’s one good way to start pinpointing at least 5 things that you really genuinely enjoy doing and sustainably can want to share it with others.

Finding Your Passion and Purpose

RAJ SHAMANI: What do you love pontificating about? Pontificating is a good one.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, I mean, I love pontificating about the brain. So clearly I love the brain. Exactly. So this is it. You like talking about something. So you find out what that is. Two, you find out whether you’re willing to do the work. That’s the sustainability. Are you willing to do the work? Because you can enjoy something transiently, but if you’re not willing to put in the effort, it’s not going to sustain. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Michael Phelps or you’re Michael Jordan. In both those cases, those examples do not work without a ton of effort. So effort and process is eventually the long-term way of sustained achievement.

So I would say, are you ready to put in the work? What will you put in the work for? If you have to do this over and over again, day in and day out, for hours at a time, will you be able to do this and will you be able to sustain it? Or are you going to get so bored and so put off that you’re going to want to quit? That’s the second question that you have to ask.

And three, I think you have to ask that if you didn’t get the outcome that you wanted, would the process have given you enough joy? That’s the hardest question to answer, but that’s the question that’s worth answering because it’s a very difficult one. It’s a very difficult one, but it’s the one that will sustain you because the outcome is a byproduct. The process is eventually what you have to do. When you started, did you know you were going to be successful?

RAJ SHAMANI: I knew I would.

VIDITA VAIDYA: You knew you were successful. You knew you— when your first podcast, did you know you would be successful?

RAJ SHAMANI: I’ll make it.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Because that’s because you were convincing yourself. But did you like the process independently? Exactly. So that answers the question, right? You were happy to talk to all kinds of people over and over again because you enjoyed that process.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah. It was a question I asked myself that if I knew that I will win and will be able to make something out of it, the question was, if I’m not able to do it for 10 years, will I still be happy?

VIDITA VAIDYA: And the answer was yes. So that’s a great question because you just answered that question, which was, if I did the process for 10 years and at the 10-year point I had still not hit the outcome I wanted, I’d have been happy those 10 years were spent doing that because I enjoyed those 10 years. Are you passionate enough? That answers it. That’s precisely it. Can you, independent of the outcome, will you be able to sustain what is required of the process? If you are able to do that, you’ll do the hard work. It’ll also get to the goal because if you do this well enough, eventually you’ll get to the goal. You eventually get to the goal.

I think what happens is people become supremely outcome-focused very quickly, are not willing to do the process and want the results. We are— yesterday, I want to win yesterday, but I’m not willing to do any of the work that is required. To be Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, you have to do a lot of work, a lot of work. You can’t become just Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps by saying today morning I’m going to wake up and I will be able to do that. I have to put in the work. Of course, in those cases, because you’re looking at athletic ability, there are skills that are required. But in many things, skills are required and you need the skills, but without the process and without doing the work, there is no—

RAJ SHAMANI: No way. Fair, fair.

The Billionaire Brain vs. The Stuck Brain

RAJ SHAMANI: Okay, so if you open up, let’s say, a billionaire’s brain of, let’s say, I don’t know, Elon Musk, okay, and you open up a brain of a 25-year-old or a 35-year-old who’s here at his home feeling stuck, it’s like, I’m not able to do something, I don’t like my life. Will their brains be identical or different?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So no brain is identical to any other brain. So let’s start with that. Even if you take identical twins who have the same genetic makeup, their brains are not identical, partly because your brain is continuous. It’s like a blueprint. Okay, let’s say I’m an architect and I build a building. Okay, now I have all of these rooms, one above each other. They’re all identical in terms of the shape of the room. Everything is in the same place. But then I decorate each room completely differently. The interior decorators come in, room— it doesn’t look like each other, even though the kitchen is always in the same place, the bathroom is in the same place, the bedroom is in the same.

So if I look at your brain, my brain, Elon Musk’s brain, anyone’s brain, the prefrontal cortex is always here. It’s not going to be in this part. Your temporal lobes are always going to be here. Your cerebellum is always good. So the locations will be the same, but in the detail, they will vary quite a bit because experience is educating the blueprint. So like the interior decorator is decorating the rooms differently, life experiences are teaching the brain to readjust the way it looks in its detail. So the neurons, dendrites, the strength of the connections, what pathway is particularly strong in one individual versus another, is continuously being educated by life.

No one lives the same life. Even two identical twins growing up in the same household don’t live the same life because right from in utero, when they’re in their mother’s tummy, their nutritional access is not identical. So even though genetically they are clones of each other, they’re not getting the same nutritional access. They will not have the same life experiences. So already there is that much difference.

So certainly from someone who is perhaps at the lowest point in their life where they feel they have no hope, their brain is going to show certain structural changes that are associated, especially if they have a condition like major depression or anxiety or any of these things. There are some structural changes that are happening. There are biochemical changes happening in the brain. So there is a different neurochemistry in this brain from someone who is perhaps at the top end of their game where they’re continuously challenging their nervous system. Also, what histories of food you have eaten, what histories of drugs you’ve taken, what histories of life experiences you’ve had are going to change your brain. So it’s not going to be identical.

RAJ SHAMANI: No, but you won’t be able to tell, like, which one’s a billionaire brain versus which one. But is it like some part of the brain will be bigger or smaller just because I get dopamine by winning? Sure, winning, or versus I get dopamine by just losing or maybe I don’t get dopamine at all?

VIDITA VAIDYA: No, it’s not going to drastically vary unless there’s, for example, I mean, where the variation comes, which is very visibly obvious, is if you look at an addict’s brain, 101%, you’ll be able to tell that there is a history of addiction. If you look at an individual that has gone to severe trauma, like a post-traumatic stress disorder, etc., there are physical architectural changes. Volume shrinks. The hippocampus shows a shrinkage. So you can see that someone who has chronic alcoholism. Yes, you can tell that that brain has had that kind of alcohol or cocaine or heroin abuse. There are clear, obvious structural changes that I think you can make out. But in the detail of whether someone is terribly motivated versus not, you’re not going to necessarily pick that up very easily from looking at—

RAJ SHAMANI: Just an MRI. Yeah.

VIDITA VAIDYA: You may pick it up if you start looking at the intensity of specific receptors. So for example, people have done these studies in animals that have a social dominance hierarchy. So there is the alpha at the top of the hierarchy, then there are individuals at the lower end of the hierarchy. When you look at individuals on that hierarchy, their dopamine receptor and the striatum looks slightly different from each other. So yes, once you move to that level of detail, you might pick up subtle differences. In the broad, no, but in subtlety, yes.

Feeling Stuck: What Your Brain Is Telling You

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. So explain me what is going on in someone’s brain, okay, when they are probably 25 or 35, okay, and every day they go do their work, they come back home, and before bed they are feeling like something’s missing. Is there something which is going wrong in my brain, or is it like, what’s going on? Why do I feel like, am I not living up to my potential? I’m stuck. I’m not living the life that I want to live, or maybe there’s something missing, like I’m not enjoying that.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That’s a common feeling. It’s not an unusual feeling. A lot of people feel like they’re stuck in a rut where this doesn’t feel right. Now let’s take away the requirements of food, shelter, clothing, for which when those are your essential requirements, you don’t have the luxury to quit or the luxury to switch gears sometimes, right? Sometimes those become so important that you don’t have the chance to say, I’m quitting this and doing something else.

But if you repeatedly feel this way, you’re feeling that you’re stuck in a rut and this is not where you should be, then it’s probably your system telling you that this may not be the right fit. Either the right fit of a job, or the right fit of a situation, or the right fit of a relationship even. It can be all of these situations that can make you feel like this doesn’t feel right.

Our body has n number of ways of telling us when we are not feeling well. Your body has a way of telling you, oh my God, I’m going to catch a bug. As in, you already know you’re feeling tired and you’re going to fall sick. So I think these are signals that your body gives you. Some of them are worth responding to, some of them are not worth responding to. Let’s say you have a situation where food on the table is vital. You cannot, don’t have the luxury of responding to this because the next day meal will not come. So you have no choice in that moment. You can’t philosophize when you don’t have the opportunity. So from that perspective, let’s put that aside. But otherwise, in a 25-35-year-old who says, let’s say, roti kapra makan is largely sorted, as in you will survive, then this is a signal your body is telling you that this is not the right fit, of something not being right.

RAJ SHAMANI: Because I know so many individuals, probably some of them watching right now, is everything in their life is going great. Okay. They have a great job or they have great work, and they have great relationships, like with their family, everything’s good. They’re in shape, they go to exercise. Once they come back home, they still feel like there’s something missing. Maybe they don’t have a hobby, maybe they don’t have nice work or meaningful— I don’t know, they’ll find out some way to tell themselves that there is something missing.

And it’s a large field, like there are— in fact, I would go ahead to an extent and tell you that in last 1 year, if I’ve met 100 friends of mine, 95 of them have been feeling this way, and it has nothing to do with their achievement level.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, because like I said, achievement’s only going to fill this much of your—

RAJ SHAMANI: But all 95, like, how this entire generation is feeling.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I’m surprised. I think part of it—

RAJ SHAMANI: We can do this like right now outside and people will say that they’re missing something.

The Complexity of Modern Life and the Search for Meaning

VIDITA VAIDYA: I totally get it. It’s partly— it’s because the world that your generation occupies, and I consider myself an older generation, is a more complex social world. It’s a way more complicated social universe than the one we had. Our worlds were narrower, smaller, easier to manage, easier to navigate, and there was much more room for heterogeneity. I like the word heterogeneity because all our outcomes are possible. You could live life broadly. And there was also a much more ability to make peace with one’s circumstances. And circumstances sometimes are in one’s control. Sometimes they’re not in one’s control.

I think the present generation feels scales of pressure that are significantly harder than our generation felt. See, we are a mean— we try to find meaning in our life or purpose in our life. And if you don’t feel meaning and you don’t feel purpose, and it comes from many different things, but if you don’t feel it, that can create a massive sense of vacuum, right? And it’s not obvious what is going to make meaning and what is going to make purpose. It’s very individual. And for each person, where their sense of meaning and purpose will come from is very, very different.

One of my all-time favorite books is Viktor Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning. All-time favorite, right? Because it tells you when everything is stripped away, and that is literally what happened in the Holocaust for him, everything was stripped away, where do you find meaning when everything is gone, when everything has been removed. It’s a very profound book, but in a sense, it’s coming back to the deep existential questions that people like to shove underneath the carpet because life and its productivity will go on. But the existential questions as a species, we have always grappled with. And you can only shove them under the carpet to a certain degree and extent. At some point, they do come up.

Phone Addiction and the Dopamine Loop

RAJ SHAMANI: And so it’s like if the lack of meaning in the things that you do, or I would rather say lack of intentional meaning in things that you do, is causing you to feel that there’s something missing. There’s another thing which our generation does a lot, and it’s probably become one of the biggest problems that we are going through at this point. Like right now, every single person who’s watching this must have checked their phone 20 times even during the conversation, before, after it also. They’re going to scroll through it maybe 225 times in the day, and yet when they go to bed, they’re going to regret it.

VIDITA VAIDYA: They’re going to regret— they’re going to regret— scrolled.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yes, they’re going to regret the fact that they had to check their phones probably 150 times a day. And they do the same thing again tomorrow. So tomorrow they’ll tell themselves that I don’t want to use my phone this much, but they’ll end up using it again. And at night when they are with the phone, they’re like, okay, tonight I’m not going to use it. 5 minutes in, 20 minutes in, 30 minutes in, and then when they’re putting it down, they’re still going to regret and they’re going to feel sad about it. What’s happening to my willpower that I tell myself that I’m going to put that phone down and not touch it, and yet I go there and touch it again and again. Is this something in my brain or willpower? Like, what is going on?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Not even that. It’s your habit formation. It’s habits. Our brain also forms habits. Habits are good. Some habits are very good. They’re vital. Your brain is designed to form habits. In fact, many habits help you to get to whatever goal you want to. But like I told you, the habits also involve that same basal ganglia dopamine pathway circuit, and it’s the same circuit that’s involved in habit formation. The underlying part of that circuit is involved in addiction and motivation and reward. So habits form many times because they’re rewarding.

Some of them are horrible, like there are people who will take out one hair and pull it out while they’re studying, and then they end up with one bald patch in the middle of the head because they literally pulled out all the hair from that one spot. But it’s a habit that they’re finding hard to break. Much the same way, it’s a habit. And it’s a reinforced habit because it’s also giving you a dopamine hit, right?

One, it gives you a social reward. Many times it can also give you social punishment. But let’s say the social reward is a larger fraction than the social punishment. Because you’re getting that social reward of a sense of intimacy, a sense of connection to something, you’re following someone, you have an intimate understanding of their lives, which you should not have if you were not a part of their life. But it’s now publicly available. You follow, then you get interested, then you follow even more, then you want to know even more, and then you have this illusion of intimacy that has now been created.

It’s also rewarding that same dopamine reward circuit, that same pathway. It’s the same circuit that gets activated by gambling. So it’s not as though that pathway is only activated by alcohol, heroin, nicotine, and sugar. It’s activated by gambling. It’s also activated by this kind of inveterate addiction to social media, right? So it’s the same thing.

And what do you say when you say, “This is the last time I’m going to smoke”? It’s the same breaking of a habit, right? Why do they always say, “Once an addict, always an addict,” or “a recovering addict”? They’re saying that because you are a recovering addict. You’re consciously breaking a habit, but it’s not an easy habit to break. Much the same way, this is also not an easy— it’s an easier habit than nicotine and alcohol. So let’s be clear about that. It’s an easier habit in some ways than gambling. And the number of people playing poker now with large amounts of money is not small, right? So gambling is clearly an addiction, but social media, while on the scale may not activate the circuit to the same extent, is in the same family. So breaking that habit is hard.

What Defeats Willpower

RAJ SHAMANI: But what is the exact mechanism which is defeating my willpower? Because I want to quit. A lot of people say that they want to quit.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s the same thing that’s defeating your willpower when you find it hard to quit smoking. It’s the same thing that’s defeating your willpower when you decide “This is the last drink I have,” even though you’re an alcoholic and you know it’s ruining your liver. You still can’t, right? It’s not because it’s a moral failing in you— you have decided I’m not going to do this, but that is hard to override the circuit. So let me put up—

RAJ SHAMANI: And what is that?

VIDITA VAIDYA: I’ll give you a sense of it. So this pathway which goes from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens produces dopamine. Dopamine that comes out from the VTA is dumped out in the nucleus accumbens. The level of dopamine that happens with a natural reward— and I will give you food, sex, or social interaction— are all natural rewards. They produce a certain amount of dopamine. This is the range where you will be with something like cocaine and heroin. This is the range you will be in with something like alcohol and nicotine. And this is the range you will be with gambling, etc. You’re in a factor difference.

Now once you get used to that level, this level ceases to be pleasurable in the same way because you’re now— gain has been adjusted to some extremely high level. This is one of the hard things, it is to take yourself and wean yourself off that, and the relapse rates are very, very high. Much the same way you can have a relapse rate for this also. You can say I’m going to lock my phone for one week, I’ll not touch it. You might get antsy and literally jittery and want to use your phone. You could try that, but then over a period of time, you will find yourself going back to it. You slide back into that old habit because it is providing a hit. It’s providing a certain degree of a reward. And in that sense, it’s pleasurable. So our brain would find it hard to give up repetitive activities that provide a certain degree of pleasure.

You control that by using your cortices, in particular, your prefrontal cortex. It’s this part of your brain that does the decision-making that says, “I am not going to doom scroll in the middle of the night.” That’s the part of your circuit that’s telling you, “I’m overriding this.” Now, how well that circuit is working— this is variable. Not every person is going to find it impossible to break the habit. But unless you train that circuit early on to postpone gratification, to postpone fast and quick rewards, continuous addiction to fast and quick rewards, it’s going to be hard to be able to postpone gratification.

There was a reason why in the old days they made you do certain exercises of postponing gratification. Fasting, for example, not an easy thing for most people to do. If you have to fast for 24 hours, it’s not an easy thing. You’ll thirst, hunger, ABCD requirements, right? But when you fast for a few hours, it’s more not about the fasting, it’s more about do you have the mental willpower to do that fast. It’s training your brain. You’re just training your brain to say, “I can go without food for the next 12 hours.” And most cases, in 12 hours, unless you have a serious underlying health condition, 12 hours of fasting is doable, right? It’s doable. It was a training exercise for the brain in a sense.

We don’t have too many training exercises for the brain that allow us to postpone gratification. So it’s like a muscle that you need to grow in a sense. When you go to the gym and do an exercise, you’re growing a muscle. Much the same way, if you’re training your brain to do certain things, you need to do them repeatedly.

3 Exercises to Improve Willpower

RAJ SHAMANI: Repeatedly. So tell me 3 top exercises which I can do to improve my willpower.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I think one of the things that you can do is tell yourself that you take a task, and if the task has a little bit of a challenge and it requires you to complete it— and I’ll give you a challenge which is a hard one. Like, one of the challenges for the brain which is hard to do is learning a new language. Most people will quit very quickly, because it’s a hard ask.

RAJ SHAMANI: Been there, done that.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Very hard to learn a new language, but it’s a skill set that will demand a certain amount of discipline from your brain. The second one is learning a new instrument, like learning a musical instrument. Again, hard ask, because you will suck at it in the beginning. You will not produce anything. It’ll sound like a cat that is being killed or something. But if you do this repeatedly, it builds.

So it’s essentially discipline-requiring activities that are the things that help with willpower. Things that force you to do something which you don’t really love to do, but you’re doing it to get to a certain goal, are great ways of driving up your willpower because they’re basically teaching you the discipline of postponing gratification. You’re not going to get a reward right away. You’re still doing it, right? You’re still telling yourself, “I will go and study for that 1 hour, learn the language, Duolingo, whatever it is.” But it’s pushing your brain to be more— willpower is what? It’s essentially saying, can I override a circuit that is so dependent on this cue by using surely my mind to say I’m not going to do this?

RAJ SHAMANI: But is there any other one more exercise which can be like an easier thing to do? Okay, so not learning a new language, learning a new instrument, that can be two.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That can be two. I think learning something new which is hard for you. It needs to be hard. Cannot be easy because this is not easy. So you’re training your brain to take on harder tasks, tasks that require a little bit of a demand. In any case, that is singularly the best thing you can do for your brain. Pushing your brain to learn new things and try new things is the best way we know currently of getting the brain to work much more optimally. And also that helps significantly with the aging-associated degenerative changes that kick in post-35, 40, right? Everything is going into decline after that. So the best way we know currently from everything that we understand is using our brain for harder tasks, not for simple tasks.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. So would you say— because I read, I have this habit that even if I’m not reading or learning something today, which I mostly make it a point that at least 30 minutes or 1 hour I’ll read something or learn something new. But on the days when I’m absolutely tired or not feeling like it, I’ll make a point that I will at least learn 1 new word. So I have this dictionary right next to my bed and I’ll open it randomly and read some word. I will make it a point. So does just doing that on an everyday basis actually improve my willpower? Just that.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, because it’s an ask and it’s a task and you’ve set yourself that and you are telling yourself—

RAJ SHAMANI: It’s just one word.

Neurobics and Brain Training

VIDITA VAIDYA: But you’re holding yourself accountable. It’s the accountability also, right? It is one word. Now the thing is, if you learn that one word and never use it ever again in your life, then it’s not much value. But you learn a word and then you say, how do I employ that word in my vocabulary? How do I utilize this? How do I put this into usage? When you’re using that word, and that actually is an ask, it’s a smaller ask than learning a language or whatever, but it’s a good ask.

Every building block step is a way in that direction. It’s like if you had to play some game on your phone, Sudoku’s a good game to play for a reason because it requires you to do a little bit of analytic thought right there. Crosswords are great ways to stretch your brain a little bit. So there are, there’s no question, there are games on things which are going to push you a little bit more than Candy Crush, right? So no harm if you’re going to have to be on that object, then pick something that stretches you a little bit, right?

There’s this app that was actually set up by these guys in California, a bunch of neuroscientists called Lumosity. But they did it for this reason, to see that, okay, now people are anyway going to be on their phone. Now you can’t stop them. Then on the phone, can we give them something that is like a neuroscience gaming ask, which forces your brain to utilize things like set shifting, you know, rapid, quick adjustment of the brain, which is a training exercise. Can you put the brain through this? If nothing else, at least you will push your brain to being slightly more effective at certain tasks.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting.

VIDITA VAIDYA: What’s the name of that? It’s called Lumosity. It was generated by a bunch of neuroscientists but they did this for this reason because people are anyway on their phone. We are not going to be able to get them to a book or out into nature very easily. If they are there, how do we utilize this time?

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, I found out about these concepts like a couple of years ago, the concept called neurobics, right? And I found it very fascinating, just like doing little things, exercising your brain. Exactly, like just doing little things which are not my general way of doing things. It’s great. Like, I think it’s been 2 years that now I’ve been doing— like, so morning I do brush with my right, I’m right-handed. Evening I do it from the left hand. Then now I was like, I want to add another layer. So in my 45 minutes of walking, 10 minutes I do back walk. That’s actually very interesting. So like, I try to find some ways—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Totally different muscle set than you’re used to when you walk forward compared to what you use when walking backward. So yeah, I mean, it’s certain. So that’s procedural, right? So now you’d be using a set of pathways that are involved in procedural learning, but you’re doing it in a very different way. And it’s training definitely different circuits in your body.

So the brain, like I said, is an experience-incorporating organ. Garbage in is garbage out. There is a reason why we often use that term. Like if you are really early feeding your brain with just absolute nonsense, then over time you should not be surprised if what emerges out is not of very high caliber. It’s an opportunity. That’s not to say that there isn’t room for absolute relaxation and whatever. There is. But there is room also for trying to do things which really do enrich your brain. There is room. And it is true, you’re using the term neurobics, but basically that’s what it is. You’re using exercises that stimulate your brain and cause it to expand beyond its normal working range.

RAJ SHAMANI: So the more you do it, the better you will get with controlling, and the more control you have, the better willpower you will have.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, and I think doing harder things is the way to do it. Too easy doesn’t really give you—

RAJ SHAMANI: I agree.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, the hard things are the ones that push you to say, can I really now push my—

Breaking Phone Addiction Through Rules and Environment

RAJ SHAMANI: Push my limits a little bit. Like, I had severe phone Reels addiction. Like, not even— forget Reels, like just checking notifications. Even if there’s no notification, I’ll check up like 50 times to see if there’s a notification or no. And I think one thing which definitely helps, because here I don’t have any phone, so I just switch it off. But then I found out that after the podcast or before the podcast, I would constantly be on my phone. So I stopped. I started engaging that on my activities which I do every day, during those activities I won’t use my phone. And like slowly now it has become like I don’t care. I’m setting up rules. Like my environment is setting up. Like the moment I enter gym, I used to be on my phone all the time even in the gym. Now my phone is with my trainer, he doesn’t give me until the session gets over.

VIDITA VAIDYA: See, this is good because you’re creating setting rules, but then you have to follow said rules, right? So that’s what it is. And sometimes people don’t follow rules. You can follow rules and reward yourself. That’s another way of getting yourself over that initial hump. You set a rule and you say, if I have achieved the rule today, then I have room for a specific reward.

Of course, your reward can’t be something like 20 hours of scrolling. It has to be nothing to do with the thing that you’re trying to fix, but it can be something very specific. It could be like, I will buy myself a new book. I will buy myself something, something that you want as a little reward for yourself for having followed that rule in the beginning. Over time, the rules will become easier to follow, and then you just get better at it.

Understanding Anxiety: What It Is and What It Isn’t

RAJ SHAMANI: So just environment and rules. Okay. There’s another thing, okay, because we were talking about phone scrolling. There’s one more thing which is very interesting for me to understand, is the word which is now very loosely used these days. It’s called anxiety, right? So it’s like everybody— there are two types of people, okay? So one is like everybody has anxiety, no matter what they’re going through, they say that they have anxiety. And then there’s another set of people who are like, “Oh, it’s just in your head.” So one is dismissive of it, the other is full-time, every emotion is anxiety. So there are two completely different people now. It’s become a polarized situation. So explain me simply, like, what is anxiety and what is an anxiety attack? Where in the body is anxiety? What do I go through? And what is not anxiety?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So anxiety— so there’s fear, right, which is the underlying basis eventually for why people develop anxiety. Fear is an essential emotion for any species. It teaches you how to survive. It’s like the very basic thing of knowing that when you go into a park and there happens to be a tiger loose, you should not be wandering around, otherwise you will be tiger meat, you know, meal of the tiger. So that fear is a genuine fear in response to some survival-evoking threat.

Anxiety is when there is no obvious threat. You can’t see a threat. Nobody else can see a threat. Your body is responding like there is a tiger. Okay, so in this room right now, there is no tiger, so you and I should not be having a full-fledged fear response. But if we are anxious, we respond in the same way we would if there was a real big threat in the room, right? Which means what? My palms will sweat, so I get a galvanic stress response. My mouth will dry, so all the saliva will dry up. My sympathetic nervous system increases, which means my heart rate goes up. So I can clearly see a shift in my pulse rate. So it’s going up. I can feel palpitations sometimes. This is a milder end of things, but your body is responding like there is an immediate threat. So your threat perception system and your threat response system is responding inappropriately to the cues.

That system is vital for your survival. You don’t have it, you’re going to die. But now there is no need for me to freak out in this room. There is no tiger. Why am I responding this way? It’s because my body perceives threats which are not overtly obvious to anyone else, but for my body, it feels like a complete threat.

So when a person says, “I’m feeling anxious,” they’re feeling anxious about some event or something which you or I may not agree is an anxiety-provoking event. So all the people who are saying, “Why are you feeling anxious? There’s nothing to be anxious about,” they’re dismissing that threat because it’s not an obvious threat. For that person, it feels like a profoundly obvious threat.

Right now, you can’t deny that it feels like that for the person, because if they are actually having a panic attack, they will feel like they’re having a heart attack. It’s literally as bad as a heart attack. A severe panic attack, your body is going through literally that feeling of massive catecholamine release. Your heart is literally in your throat. You feel your throat beginning to clench. You have full hands, sweating. It’s a full physiological reaction which will likely get you into the emergency room because you feel like you’re having a heart attack. Then you go in there and the person says, “But there’s no cardiac issues.” It is a full-fledged panic attack. So your body has reacted like there is a crisis. Now you can’t tell that person you imagined it because every parameter shows that they have not imagined it, but there is no obvious threat, right?

So now this becomes a question about how do you— and when you get this chronic form of anxiety, it may or may not come with panic attacks. In some cases it may have panic attacks, in some cases it just may be chronic anxiety where you chronically are feeling anxious, no panic attack, but chronic anxiety about not obvious threats. Obvious threats are easy. Someone has had a familial loss, someone is going through a real major divorce, something you can see the thing that is driving the anxiety. No obvious external threat, and yet the person is severely anxious. Denying it would not be right because that person feels it.

But also the question of now, how do you handle imaginary or perceived threats? How do you scale back threats which are not really a crisis to a manageable level? Some of it is medication. So people would give an anti-anxiety treatment, and there are plenty, but they’re not very good ones. They’re all symptomatic. They handle the symptoms, but they don’t handle the underlying condition. Often it takes therapy, a combination of medication, and the ability to detect what are your triggers to be able to watch for what is happening.

But yes, we live in a much more complex world in which perceived threats are much larger than what they were in the past, partly because our body was beautifully designed to deal with acute stress. It does very well with acute stress. It doesn’t do well with chronic social stress. And currently all threats, almost 90% of them, will fall into the category of chronic social stress. That’s the category that tends to cause these sorts of— it’s social and it’s chronic.

It could be something as simple as having a bad relationship with your boss. You walk into work, they’ve not even said anything to you, their eyebrow has moved a little bit and there has been a little bit of displeasure on their face, and it has totally thrown your day off, your week off, your month off. And that’s all it was. You have not been fired, nothing has happened, but it’s such a bad relationship that you feel such a sense of impending doom almost. And so yes, you have the full-fledged anxiety reaction.

RAJ SHAMANI: Where in the brain does it react? When a boss yells at me and I feel— I don’t know what I feel, but whenever a boss yells at an employee, where do they feel it in the brain and what goes on in the brain?

The Biology of Chronic Stress

VIDITA VAIDYA: Well, if you’re feeling strong stress, the first place will be the hypothalamus, this part of the brain, the hypothalamus that gets activated as a stress circuit. It activates your pituitary, which is this organ, which releases corti— essentially releases the hormone that will drive— releases something called ACTH. Don’t worry about the name. That goes to your adrenal glands, which sit on either side of your kidney, and they secrete cortisol.

Now cortisol is your stress hormone that goes all over your body. The job of cortisol is actually very clear. It’s supposed to shut down your digestion, shut down your reproduction, reorient glucose to your muscles. And this makes sense because if I had the tiger in front of me, I will have to run away or I will have to hide. I have to do two things, which means my glucose cannot be going everywhere. It needs to go to my muscles. I need to get out of here. I need to hide or run away.

So this system is beautifully evolutionarily designed to give you fast, quick escape. Fight or flight. Fight is useless with a tiger, so you flight, so you escape. And that cortisol is vital in that. In addition you will release from the adrenal glands adrenaline, which causes your heart rate to go up, causes your full sympathetic— your pupils will shift in size, you know, tongue saliva will dry up. All this is good because right now you’re not worrying about digestion or reproduction.

But now imagine this is happening when the boss shouts at you. And if your boss shouts at you every day in the week, every day in the week your body is responding like there is a tiger in the room. Same response, right? But no control over this situation. You can’t run away from it. You’re stuck with this person. So you have a full-fledged immune response plus a hormonal response. To the extent that your immune— there is a reason why we see so many immune reactions, disrupted immune reactions as well, because your stress pathways have gone haywire. Now, this individual, if they don’t get irritable bowel syndrome and they don’t get gut dysfunction, emotion, it’s inevitable.

Now, if you keep doing this day in and day out, day in and day out, then your systems are going to be like, what is going on? My digestion is shut down, my reproductive pathways are shut down. All this is shut down because I’m having this huge fight or flight response to this one individual who I don’t have control over. So either you have to create some boundary and tell the person that I do not appreciate the way you’re communicating to me, go to HR, find a way to manage that, or find a way to manage change your own responses where you don’t react that way, where you say, okay, yeah, he’s shouting, but that’s his problem. I’m not going to have a full-fledged body reaction to this. So yes, we are driving our pathways like this. And now imagine that that happens with how many likes you get on social media.

RAJ SHAMANI: That is chronic social stress. Give me 2-3 examples. So one was boss.

Chronic Social Stress: Examples and Impact

VIDITA VAIDYA: One was boss. Another chronic social stress is, let’s say, your world is you’re a teenager. Your world is right now your crew of people who are your age, who currently mainly you interact with on whatever, Instagram, etc., etc., etc. You are being socially bullied by the popular kids in the class or in the whatever, right? You are now being ostracized socially, chronically socially ostracized. It’s not overt. Nobody’s saying anything, but they’re just not including you in anything. And you’ve been pushed out and pushed out and pushed out till you feel isolated. And let’s say you post a picture of yourself or something, having a good day, it’s your birthday, some— nobody in your classroom likes it. That’s a social— yeah, that’s the social attack. So someone just basically made you feel bullied on social media.

That produces the same biological response. You will have the same underlying biochemistry happening in your body. Now that’s happening through— for something you can’t control. Yeah. It’s a threat that is not in your hands, that you have no control over, unless you can get yourself out of that situation, hopefully find a bunch of people who genuinely care about you and invest in them and forget about these bullies. But that’s not easy to tell a teenager to do who’s suffering through that, right?

You have to first acknowledge what they feel. And that’s where I say to naysayers who dismiss someone, don’t start with the dismissal because you have not walked their shoes. True. You haven’t walked their shoes. And before you tell them, “Oh, why are you even reacting? You’re overreacting.” Take the time to consider the possibility that for them it’s a huge response. Panic attacks get people into the ER for a reason because it literally feels like a heart attack.

RAJ SHAMANI: And can this happen inside a family as well? Of course it can happen. Chronic social stress can be caused by family members? 100%. How? Give me some examples. Situation? Most common situation?

Emotional Abuse as Chronic Stress

VIDITA VAIDYA: Most common is emotional abuse and emotional invalidation of another individual. Let’s say every single day someone is told that you’re incapable, you will never achieve anything. “Look again, you’ve disappointed me. Look, this is all you’re capable of doing. Why should I expect any better of you?” I’m just saying these words, not raised voice, not anything. But if this happens 24/7, day in and day out, that’s emotional abuse. That’s essentially telling and denigrating another person of their inherent identity and chronically attacking them on anything.

So that is absolutely a strong stress. So we look at physical abuse and we see it. So we view this as an obvious form of abuse, domestic abuse. But emotional— sustained emotional abuse where you denigrate the other person’s inherent identity capability day in and day out is also a form of abuse. And that is a massive social stress. It happens in families all the time, unfortunately.

The very people you expect to be your cheerleaders saying you can go achieve everything that you want, that you are capable of, you know, climbing to the top of whatever, Mount Everest, doing whatever you need to do, are the people who are telling you you’re not capable of doing it. That’s a hard thing for anybody to swallow. And that is something that happens early. In particular, those kinds of stresses, when they happen to children, change their life histories forever. And that’s scary. So that first 10, 15 years of life, if this happens in that first decade and a half of life, that has very long-lasting consequences. In fact, the damaging consequences of that are often across the whole lifespan.

Where Anxiety Manifests in the Body

RAJ SHAMANI: So does this enzyme anxiety, like where does it happen? Does it happen inside my body or brain? Both. So the— where does it attack first?

VIDITA VAIDYA: So the first place you will feel it is actually in your hypothalamus, which activates the release. But the other place you’ll feel it is in your heart and in your gut. The two places you first feel it, you see, my— I don’t feel okay here. So one of the things that people often feel is that they have to go to the loo because they have to use the restroom because they literally— I really have to take it all out. That’s a fear response. That was a classic old fear response, which is a sympathetic nervous system getting activated. You dump out everything that is in your digestive tract, or you may feel like puking, or you may feel like taking it out, right?

So these two things happen. Your heart rate goes up, your palms start sweating, your mouth dries. By then, the cortisol has nicely peaked in the first 15-20 minutes, and that’s going everywhere in your body saying, “Muscles, come on, get the glucose, do something.” But you are not going to run from. You’re sitting in your office quietly having this full response, but you don’t have anything to do with— you shut down your reproduction type immune system. All your immune cells start surveillance underneath the skin, imagining that you will be eaten.

So if you were really out in the savannah or wherever, where one tiger was going to come and bite you, or a lion was going to come and attack you, you would need to repair the wounds, right? So you send all your immune system into hypervigilance mode, saying, “Let me see if there’s a cut or anything anywhere so that I can protect this person.” No cut. The cuts are only like invisible.

RAJ SHAMANI: So first is brain, then is heart.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Why heart? Because the first thing you have to do is get everything to every part of your body. What’s going to get the stuff to your body? Even your hormones to get to your body, it’s your heart pumps it to every part of your body. Glucose, if you need to get to every part, you need to increase the rate at which the stuff is pumping this information everywhere. So your heart rate going up is the biggest indicator of— first indicator of stress.

In fact, you can just do that. If you do a small mental math test, which is for most people mildly stressful, and you just follow your heart rate, you will see a clear bump up. Interesting. Yeah, most people. So if you do this tiny experiment, you can take somebody in front of you and you say, “I’m going to give you mental math. You have to solve these things. I will throw a question at you in 5 minutes. You have to solve them. I’m just going to watch your heart rate.” Most people will have a nice— unless they’re a mathematician who loves doing mental math. But you will see this quick bump up in heart rate. And more often than not, you will also see a galvanic skin response, a mild amount of sweat, which is what they’re detecting with lie detectors and stuff, right? That’s what you’re looking at. You’re looking at whether galvanic skin response, ability to conduct a signal, is changed because sweat will be a better conductor.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. I didn’t know that lie detection was mostly done through sweat.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s also done through the basically galvanic skin response to see if you sweat when you’re asked a question that you have to, then fib.

Childhood Trauma: Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Responses

RAJ SHAMANI: Fascinating. Okay, you touched something where you said in a kid when they’re growing years, right, that if something like this happens, chronic social stress where they’ve been negated, they’ve been told incapable or whatever, childhood trauma, stuff like that, right? That is— oh, I was reading about something, right, that when you go through a certain level of stress, or let’s say a trauma, or some problematic situation in your childhood, there are chances that in your early years of growth, let’s say 20-25, when your career growth’s happening, it can actually be adaptive. Like, it can be good for you, right? But then the same things actually become maladaptive.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, there’s no free lunch. Eventually it catches up with you.

RAJ SHAMANI: Exactly. So at the age of 40, it becomes maladaptive, right? Explain me this, like, what is happening that something I’m doing today that is helping me become better, yeah, is actually going to kill me at the age of 40. Or someone who’s at 40 or 35, yeah, doesn’t know, doesn’t— looks fine and nice, but there’s something catches up.

The Cost of Chronic Stress and Cortisol

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah. So the thing about stress and the thing about cortisol is it’s very interesting. It also has a sort of bi-directional relationship with the brain. So at the lower levels of cortisol, like let’s say there’s mild stress, it’s a mild acute stress, and you make a little bit more cortisol, it actually improves your learning, it improves your attention, it improves a bunch of things.

Now, this is not surprising. Let’s say you have to perform for something, a little boost of cortisol, that’s actually helping you. So there’s something called eustress, almost like a beneficial mild stress, right? It’s in the working range of normal amount, a little bit of stress. Preparing for an exam, preparing for a public speaking event, preparing for a performance, bit of cortisol peak. So that’s the good use stress of things.

Then there’s a very high cortisol. Very high cortisol sends everything haywire, including degradation of memory, hippocampal damage, neurons die, dendrites atrophy, lots of damage in the brain.

Now what happens in individuals that have had a history of early trauma is that that period of time is actually almost like a prediction device for what your future is likely to be. There’s something in the early development, it’s a period called critical period. It’s almost as though your brain is saying, “Aha, so this is what my world will feel like 20 years down the road.” So the experiences that happen in that early window have a disproportionately larger impact on your brain than experiences in the adult brain.

So in the young childhood adolescent window, an experience which is negative and strong series of experiences that are negative, you are preparing for the likelihood that more negative experiences are going to come. So your entire HPA system is hyperactive. It’s like it’s prepared with all alarm bells to go. It’s so primed. And at the same time, the ability to shut off this pathway has gone down. So you have this hyper-primed system and the ability to control it has become less.

So now this individual has a survival advantage if they were really in the forest with a wild— which you can see, like, it would almost benefit you because you’ll be like, there’s a tiger. Even before the tiger comes, you might be prepared and get out of there. So the system is prepping for the possibility that it has to be hypervigilant.

The problem is— so there’s a beneficial effect of it. It will also give you boost in memory sometimes, a little bit better performance in stressful situations. So more often than not, when you see people who’ve had early adversity, they may handle adult adversity better because they have already had a series of experiences in which their body is prepped to handle stress in adult.

The problem with this is chronically, when you keep doing this to your brain over a lifespan, your brain is seeing way more cortisol than it should see. It’s like bathing the brain with cortisol continuously, no matter what happens, right? So now, as you age and you hit middle age life, your hippocampus starts shrinking in volume. All your inflammation markers in the periphery have gone haywire, so they’re much higher than they need to be. So your CRP, GDF-15, all your interleukin cytokines, all high, right? You’re basically aging faster.

Now, what evolutionarily— you’ve protected the individual through their reproductive years, which is their young adulthood, you’ve protected them. Then your body collapses later. So almost, it’s like you’ve done everything you could to adapt, but adaptation is costly.

RAJ SHAMANI: So my— and this is the thing, so in almost all my blood tests, everything is great. My cortisol is higher. But I don’t feel any stress. I feel normal human being. Much higher though? Little bit, not like a lot, not off the charts. It’s there, but it’s almost every time it’s slightly on the higher side.

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s always on the higher side. But also it matters when they’re testing, whether it’s morning or evening, and you should just keep an eye on that because morning is when your cortisol peak would be.

RAJ SHAMANI: But if let’s say 500 people are getting tested and on the benchmark I’m getting higher, it’s always higher. But I don’t feel stressed at all.

The Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic Nervous System

VIDITA VAIDYA: But in most high-performing individuals who are driving themselves inherently at the higher end of their capability, cortisol might be slightly higher. Now the question is, what level of cortisol starts mattering? And like I said, at the lower end of a higher cortisol, there’s actually some beneficial effects, and then it starts catching up on the body over a period of time.

I think the thing one can do— and this is what people are talking about— is how do you increase your parasympathetic nervous system and reduce your sympathetic tone? So your sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight system. It’s the “let me go to war today so I can survive tomorrow.” That’s your sympathetic nervous system. Your parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest system, right? So these are your two, and they’re literally continuously working in concert.

But we spend a lot of time on the sympathetic nervous system because that drive also gives us the adrenaline, it gives us the rush, it also helps us become goal-oriented, etc. There’s value to the sympathetic nervous system. We don’t do enough for the parasympathetic at all. Slowing it down is this side, right? Slowing down your brain, slowing down your body, slowing down your death, slowing down everything is not a primary focus, especially in your young adulthood. It’s the last thing you think. Even when you’re thinking about exercise, it’s always cardiovascular. It’s always, how do I increase my cardiovascular output?

RAJ SHAMANI: And how do I get my VO2 max?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Exactly. You’re like, okay, how am I going to do this? Right? So you’re so oriented towards—

RAJ SHAMANI: I feel attacked. Okay.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That part of the system is getting so much attention. This part is ignored. It’s never the focus. So who’s sitting and saying, let’s do shavasana for like half an hour today. People are like, if I do shavasana for 5 minutes, I fall asleep. Nothing wrong with that. But to be able to bring this part of your system into good tune is a great thing. I struggle with it. I also have a hypersympathetic overdrive. My sympathetic nervous system is much higher on function because adrenaline drive, they’re good things, but they come with their costs.

RAJ SHAMANI: So, because both of us are like that, our brain is aging faster than others?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Possibly to a certain degree, but we may also be doing other things to protect it. Because you’re also continuously learning and you’re also continuously using your brain to try different things, and that’s protective. So it’s never— unfortunately, none of this is this, and then this is the automatic outcome, right? Because it’s compensated by other things. But certainly, if somebody was to give you and me advice, they may say, why don’t you spend in your week at least 2-3 hours that are focused on your parasympathetic nervous system?

Cortisol, High Performance, and the Risk of Collapse

RAJ SHAMANI: So I— my performance coach actually tells me that because my cortisol is high and it’s like only on the border, it is actually a good thing. That’s probably a thing which is helping you do what you’re doing. Because he works with a lot of other athletes as well. So he’s like, “I’ve seen this across, it’s inevitable.” He was—

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s your body being driven, but there is room in that to work the other pathway so that you can find a quick way, even if you have a cortisol. So the thing that a cortisol level doesn’t tell you— that means your baseline is higher— doesn’t tell you how quickly you come back to baseline. Going up and how quickly you come back, that’s a vital indicator better because it’s your quick ability to respond and come back to baseline quickly that gets messed up. That becomes a problem because you go up and then you just stay up, stay up, stay up, stay up, and don’t come down. Then the body gets a lot more cortisol than it should be seeing.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, so he was— I’ll just tell you the full thing, right? So he was comparing mine with someone else, and he was explaining me how he used to work with one of the football players and captains from the part of Europe. And he was a World Cup-winning captain, and he tracked there as well. So what they found out was his cortisol was always perpetually high as well. And the fascinating thing was, not only on the match days, which is okay, but on the practice day also, it was up. So it worked great.

But then he was explaining me that after winning that one World Cup, his motivation died. So he couldn’t actually— like, he suddenly broke, or something happened where his cortisol and everything was normal. He was a much calmer person, but everything just collapsed. And that I found it weird, like, how somebody who’s always been high performing, always cortisol high, stress is high, let’s go, run, run, everything just falls apart.

And then I showed this to a neuroscientist, and the neuroscientist gave me the same explanation that you need to learn how to be more calmer or else this sudden collapse will come in your life where nothing will motivate you anymore. And I was like, this is a fair thing. And that gets me to the next question is that this happens in day-to-day life as well with a lot of people that suddenly very high functioning individuals in their 30s or 40s, they suddenly break. They burn out. Why does it happen? They’ve been high-functioning individuals.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Because there’s a cost. And I think if you’ve not learned the— there’s a biology to this, right? That our systems are meant not to be driven at 100% all the time. If you drive a system at 100%, any car also driven at 100%, you will have to go and take it back to the mechanic to do some repair, etc. We’re not giving any time to ourselves for downtime. Genuine downtime where you switch off, you learn how to relax, you give yourself time for genuine leisure. Genuine leisure.

Even our holidays have become about achievements. It’s like the next one, what am I going to tick off this box, right? It can’t be that. There has to be room for sitting in a room with a book, relaxing, or literally quieter activities. There’s a reason why people talk about things like knitting and all coming back because it slows the nervous system down. Like the repetitive action of doing something like painting, pottery, stuff with your hands. Why are there people going towards these as hobbies now? Because it brings your heart rate down, it brings a certain semblance of regulation in, and you realize that you can slow things down.

Slowing it down— we are on hyperdrive all the time. That’s a little dangerous. It does come with its cost because if you are at 24/7, even when you look at people who are looking at improving their health quality, they’re also doing it like a task, which is like, “I’m going to have X number of supplements, I’m going to do this, this is what I’m going to do. Now I will run this much, then I will do this marathon, then I will do this, then—” there’s no room in this to breathe. It’s just let’s go, go, go, go, go, go. How does this work? The system will at some point say, “I’m done.” Either it will say “I’m done” and give you a signal and you should listen to the signal, or it will say “I’m done” when you’re not listening and then you’ll have a collapse.

The Hidden Cost of Being Always “On”

RAJ SHAMANI: So high-functioning individuals, because they’re always on, on, on, on, on, run, run, run, run, they will collapse at one point because they’re not giving themselves time for leisure.

VIDITA VAIDYA: They may, they may. Because if you go non-stop with no room for downtime, I don’t think any system is designed for that kind of sustained 24/7 productivity, efficiency at all costs. It comes with that cost. It may not come with a burnout necessarily. It can come in other ways. It comes out as weird idiosyncrasies where you see people who behave and you’re thinking, “Why is this person behaving like this? They have lost their mind almost.” Or they will be really control freaks with other people, etc. So it emerges in aberrant behavioral forms. It doesn’t always have to result in a burnout, but it does emerge.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, behavioral issues— almost every high-performing individual I know of, they’ve either gone through it or they’re going through it, and they don’t even realize it.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, it’s a very common side effect of driving yourself 24/7.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, like every— it’s almost funny that I always— I’m a very reflective person. I reflect a lot, right? And every time I meet someone really remarkable and impressive, someone who’s built billions of dollars, someone who’s achieved gold medals after gold medals, someone who’s just done something remarkable in the world, right? You meet them, and if you dig deeper for like 20-30 minutes— and I tend to do that because of my podcast, right? After that, I come back and I was like, “This is an abnormal behavior.” I have never come back and be like, “This is such a golden human being.” I’m like, “I respect them because they’ve achieved something,” and I come back with like, “This is an abnormal behavior.” Every one of them has some abnormal behavior.

The Cost of Hyper-Focus and the Winner-Loser Binary

VIDITA VAIDYA: It’s unfortunately a side effect of being hyper-focused. I think hyper-focused on one-dimensional, uni-dimensional thing in life. Life comes with the side effect that it will come with some of these things.

RAJ SHAMANI: Interesting. So if I’m hyper-focused, there is some behavior that probably sometimes people who are close to me would be facing the cost of it. Some aberration for sure, because it’s—

VIDITA VAIDYA: —and I’m not even aware of it. Yeah, most often we are not aware of it. We all do it in some way. It shows up in some aberrant form. People tolerate it, and largely it falls in the realm of tolerated idiosyncrasies and in fact eccentricities, which you say indulgently, “Oh, this is not bad. I understand where this is coming from.” But sometimes it’s not. It results in people behaving really strange.

So that’s where I think there is room for— and that’s why I was telling you about this winning versus losing argument, which we started with, that I don’t like the binary. I don’t like it being two bins only because the risk of two bins only means that everyone who falls in the bin that is not officially considered, quote unquote, winning is then defined as losing. And my worry with that sort of a binary outcome is that it comes at too high a cost on too much of humanity.

We have played into this idea. We’ve played into it as cultures, we played into it as societies, we played into it at the level of individuals. And when we look across time in history, what is a winner and a loser in large cultural landscape time? I mean, somebody’s a winner today, tomorrow the same person is a loser. So culturally, civilisationally, there’s no civilisation that hasn’t gone through these troughs. Even individuals go through this all the time. You’re never going to be at all-time peak.

So given that, there has to be room for more diversity, and there has to be more room for outcomes. And perhaps one has to have reframed that understanding a little bit more broadly. Because when one does that, I think one creates room for multiple outcomes, multiple ways of existing in this world.

Currently, our tendency with people is to expect them to be the best version of themselves as many times as they can. And that’s a hard ask to sustain in a 70, 80-year lifespan. It’s not going to happen. It’s just guaranteed not going to happen. It’s a certainty. So now the question is, how do you distribute this across that 70, 80 years? How do you distribute it, and what do you also prioritize?

The point you made — how do I learn to be a great friend — can I make that one of my priorities? Not a winning bin, but a positive one. Let’s make it a positive versus not so positive. Something you can invest in. We very rarely will somebody say that one of my ambitions and goals in life is to be a great friend to someone. That’s not touted as a great goal. Shouldn’t it be one of the biggest goals we have? It is really a goal worth aspiring towards. But it’s not our priority on our current list of achievements.

Psychedelics and the Brain

RAJ SHAMANI: Here are my last two questions. One is — I really wanted to know. There’s a lot of chatter around the world about psychedelics. So drugs help your brain grow?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Okay, so drugs, like life experiences, interact with your brain and change your brain. Some drugs cause neurons to atrophy, dry, shrink. Some drugs, depending on what receptors they work on, can actually cause neurons to grow out new connections and grow new synapses. That’s not very surprising because there are things in your own body, neurochemicals in your own body that can cause neurons to grow. And there are also neurochemicals that cause things to shrink.

So if your body can have a cortisol that causes neurons to shrink, and if your body can also have a growth factor that causes neurons to grow, much the same way, many of these substances — several of which are plant-derived and from the external world — also have the capability of changing the brain, both causing damage and promoting repair.

That idea is an old idea. As long as we as human beings have walked on this planet, we have used drugs from plants to treat ourselves. Something as simple as an aspirin, which we all think about and take routinely, starts with a plant-derived origin. In India, Ayurveda is inspired by a repository of traditional Indian knowledge that has come largely from plants. So the idea that something that comes from plants can have this— psychedelics are also molecules that come from either plants or fungi. They happen to have the property of modulating a particular serotonin receptor in the brain, and associated with that, they also increase growth factors. And that seems to have something called a psychoplastogenic effect, which means that neurons grow new connections, make new synapses, etc. That may not necessarily always be good. It may sometimes be good, sometimes not.

Now, traditionally, people have used these for thousands of years in the Amazonian forest. The shamans have used them, etc. Now we have a rediscovery and a re-desire to explore them because we currently have genuinely a mental health crisis in the world. The number of patients who have anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder is large and growing. And the complexity of the world we are creating, this is only going to go higher rather than in the other direction.

Most drugs that are currently used — antidepressants, etc. — they work only on two-thirds of the population. One-third doesn’t even respond to any of the drugs that are out there. And they work slowly. When a patient starts on an antidepressant, you don’t know if it’s going to work for at least 3 to 6 weeks. So you have a patient, you’re giving a drug, you don’t know if it’s going to work, and 6 weeks later you’ll find out if it has worked at all. Otherwise you’ll have to switch drugs. So it’s really not a good situation in terms of quality of available medication. That’s why there’s been a desire to reinvestigate psychedelics.

But we are at a very delicate juncture right now for two reasons. One, because recreationally these drugs have been abused. And because they’ve been recreationally utilized, there are lots of recreational narratives which are often biased towards the positive without awareness of the complexity of these drugs and their challenges. And because of that, the recreational narrative is moving faster than the careful clinical research-associated narrative.

RAJ SHAMANI: What kind of drugs do you mean? Give me one or two names.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Ayahuasca, psilocybin from magic mushrooms, LSD from lysergic acid diethylamide, which is a synthetic psychedelic. These drugs have been utilized for recreational abuse in a sense. And that narrative of their quote-unquote beneficial effects has moved faster than the clinical research has moved.

The worry with this is you need to do the careful clinical research, you need to do the preclinical research, you need studies on rats, mice, monkeys, humans. You need all of that to understand both the usefulness, the potential harmful side effects, the potential beneficial effects — carefully and systematically — before you can rush into saying these may be potentially of use.

If you don’t do this and you rush fast, you will have negative reactions because these drugs are a class called psychotomimetic drugs, which means they produce hallucinations and altered states of consciousness. The other thing that produces hallucinations are states like schizophrenia. So they’re called psychotomimetic — they mimic the psychosis-like state. You can have negative reactions. You could have a psychotic break. This is a worry. You can’t do this without carefully doing this.

And if you take your time to do it carefully, you may even be able to synthesize new drugs that don’t have the trip and don’t have the psychosis element, but have the beneficial parts. But you have to take your time. This is a 10, 12, 15-year investment of time. And part of the problem is because patients want drugs that work and they want them fast, they may be tempted to recreationally try something which may actually have a negative effect. So this is why we are at this very delicate juncture where it’s important to study them, it’s important to study them well, and it’s equally important to not rush them into the clinic and have a situation where there is a problem.

The Risks of Recreational Psychedelic Use

RAJ SHAMANI: But then a lot of people who are taking, let’s say, LSD or mushrooms just for recreation and going for a trip — they come out very happy that they had a great trip, etc. And then they forget about it and probably 6 months later they do it again. So they’re not even probably addicted to it the way some people would be addicted to, let’s say, weed or cocaine or some other stuff. So it doesn’t look like they’re super addictive. I’ve not met anyone who’s like addicted to—

VIDITA VAIDYA: —because they don’t hit the ventral tegmental area, the reward pathway, in the same way as cocaine, heroin, nicotine, or alcohol. So they’re not on that scale.

RAJ SHAMANI: So let’s say LSD and mushrooms are not on that scale, but people are taking it without any care. Why do the majority of them tend to enjoy it even when they take it without care? There’s no side effect, at least it looks like.

VIDITA VAIDYA: We tend to hear the narratives that are positive more than we hear the narratives that are negative. Also, keep in mind that all of these retreats that give them have a financial interest in your hearing the positive narratives over the negative. So there is a financial interest element here as well. There are negative narratives. Maybe their fraction is smaller, but the negative narratives are genuinely scary as well.

And yes, there’s no doubt that these molecules can induce states which are fairly powerful. And some of those come also with the beneficial effect of giving you a mood modulatory effect, which could actually kick a person out of a state of PTSD or chronic major depression. But we cannot go based on anecdotal evidence. And right now, that’s where we are in the narrative recreational space — it’s anecdotal. You need to do this carefully and you need to do this with large enough numbers.

You need to have it in a cultural context like ours. One of the things that I’ve been doing is talking to people at NIMHANS saying India needs its own policy. We can’t not have our own policy of how we’re going to do this. Currently they’re banned because they’re all Schedule 1 substances. So anyone accessing them, it’s illegal. But we need a thought-through policy of our own clinical trials.

The US has moved fast with their clinical trials. So has Switzerland, so has Australia, Canada, many places across the world. We are yet to take a call on what we are going to do with our own clinical trials. And there is a set-setting element where the cultural context will matter. So we have to find a way that it works in our society and culture and see if it’s appropriate in our context the same way, which we are not doing at the moment.

RAJ SHAMANI: We are not, but my question was only that more anecdotes come, more stories are that people have enjoyed it. People always — and it doesn’t look like they’ve gone through any negative experience. That’s not true though, because there are— so you would argue that there’s enough?

VIDITA VAIDYA: There is enough. Especially in individuals that have a family history of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, I would say this is contraindicated. It is absolutely contraindicated because there have been examples where it has caused a psychotic break and people have ended up with a psychosis-like event under the influence of these drugs.

RAJ SHAMANI: So anyone right now listening to this who is hearing stories from their friends that ayahuasca is one of the best experiences, or they did some mushrooms, or some random psychedelic drug like LSD, and they are incentivized or motivated, or maybe just lured towards trying it because some of their friends or some social media influencer did it — what would you tell them?

VIDITA VAIDYA: I would say no, plain and simply, as simple as that. I would not.

RAJ SHAMANI: And why? Because the other side actually gives an explanation that you will reach an altered state and get clarity in life and all that crap.

The Psychedelics Debate: Risk, Rewiring, and the Search for Happiness

VIDITA VAIDYA: So first, I would say that these are molecules that have potent effects on your brain, and they don’t only have short-lived potent effects, they have long-lived potent effects on your brain. Very often these people are the same people who are worrying about eating organic vegetables and eating healthy food only, etc. And they’re very worried about what they put into their body, but they’re not worried about it when it comes to a drug of this scale, which has the potent ability to change networks in your brain, right?

So I would say that if it was someone who had clinical depression and they really wanted to— and when they were not responding to any treatment, then I would say see a psychiatrist and see if you can be part of a clinical trial. That would be one way to do. In India right now, that’s not a possibility, but people abroad are doing it.

RAJ SHAMANI: Anyone else, I would say a normal human being, there’s nothing going on.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, I would say these are really potent drugs. They rewire your brain, not just for the short term but often for the long term. And that direction in which it’s exactly going to rewire is not obvious, and it’s in your control. It’s a risk that I’m not sure one should be so willingly signing up for.

RAJ SHAMANI: So rewiring of brain will happen, but you don’t know if it’s going to be negative or positive.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I don’t know which way it will go.

RAJ SHAMANI: So rewiring of brain is possible with drugs. You decide which direction.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I mean, it’s a scary thought. It’s a bit of a Russian roulette in that sense, right? So I would say, why are you doing this? I mean, we are still far away from fully understanding the long-term consequences of these drugs. Everything that we have looked at indicates long-term effects in animals, in humans, long-lasting rewiring of circuits, long-lasting synaptic changes in neurons. I don’t know if I would just be, on a— for the pure recreational value of trying something new. I mean, you could try many other things also, right? So you could try—

RAJ SHAMANI: Would you try it?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Have you tried it? I have not, and I have zero interest. But I’m like, as I—

RAJ SHAMANI: Because you’re so curious about brain, have you ever— has it not crossed your brain, like, you should maybe try ayahuasca?

VIDITA VAIDYA: Maybe what has crossed my mind is the following, which is that if you can have altered states of consciousness that respond to a molecule like this, then inherently your brain has the capability of experiencing altered states of consciousness. And there are other ways to tap into it, and those exercises I find particularly interesting. I’ve always found meditation an extremely interesting exercise to train your brain with. That’s my chosen path because I think that there is much more room to direct where you will go than you do it molecularly with an external agent.

So I would say that there are— I mean, it’s opening your mind to the possibility of what all can happen with your nervous system. I would find other ways to do this, not the drug.

RAJ SHAMANI: For me, this is my altered state of life. Like, I love this. I’m on such a different high every time I’m doing a podcast.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I fully understand that.

Psychedelics, Cults, and Peer Pressure

RAJ SHAMANI: And for me, I’m— I mean, I work with psychedelics, I work with giving psychedelics to rodents, looking at the effects on the brain.

VIDITA VAIDYA: And I think they’re very powerful molecules and they should be studied and potentially they may become relevant in the clinic, either them or some downstream versions of them. So they will move at some stage, I think, into the clinic. But I think for a person who is just a regular human being who has no requirement at that moment for drugs that are treating a psychiatric condition, perhaps these are very potent molecules and maybe you want to give them a bit of a wide berth.

RAJ SHAMANI: I was, you know, I was shamed for not doing it once. Really? Yeah. So I was in Colombia, in Cartagena, and I was there for one retreat, like a conference sorts. And after the conference, the third day, they had a beach day. Like, that was half day, the conference ended, and they had like pool party or beach day, and they were doing this gratitude practices, etc.

They made us stand in like 4 or 5 groups. One group, let’s say 12 people, 14-people group. And the guy in the middle was an instructor who was apparently this retreat coach, therapist, whoever, like some healer. Very charismatic and charming personality, by the way. Would hand over like shrooms to everybody with— and chocolates which has something mixed in it. They would give it in pairs, ask people to stand in front of each other, and then ask them to do like some exercises, like take it, then do some exercises, tap, tap, tap, like for 5 minutes.

The whole ritual went in. People stood, said some gratitude, something, and then they all went in water and came back running. And then you would see like so many people were completely different who were loud, they went— So in that, like, I backed out. Like, I’m not doing it. So my partner was the one who was assigned— like, not my partner, but like the one random person who was supposed to be like— who me and that person were supposed to take. Like the pair we were supposed to take it together. And they shamed me, like, “Why the hell are you here? Why— everybody just went in that.”

VIDITA VAIDYA: It has a little bit of the risk of becoming a cult.

RAJ SHAMANI: It looked like we’re starting a cult.

VIDITA VAIDYA: This is my worry with it. This is my worry, that when you are studying molecules of this nature, that if you become cult-like in your view of whatever they do, then you’re not giving it the respect that it deserves to find out what its positive, negative, all effects are, right? I’m worried about that cult-like aspect of it. This is what worries me.

RAJ SHAMANI: It looked like they had a full ritual they were following. And then the whole part, I would see different phases of like 3 days I spent with those guys and I would see different personalities. So few were okay, but few were on a different trip.

VIDITA VAIDYA: Absolutely, absolutely. They’re very potent molecules.

RAJ SHAMANI: And I was heavily shamed for 3 days, like the next 2 more days.

VIDITA VAIDYA: I mean, I have been asked this question by multiple people and my response was very straightforward. I have no desire to tweak with my nervous system unnecessarily. I mean, it’s a complex enough organ. I have no need to unnecessarily go and tweak with it. There’s no need.

RAJ SHAMANI: I’m not going and tweaking my nervous system. And in my head, the explanation was, I don’t drink alcohol because I don’t want to get addicted. There’s no way on earth I’m doing this.

Meditation, Deep Breathing, and the Work That Transforms You

VIDITA VAIDYA: I don’t drink alcohol either. And my point is precisely that I have no desire to— my neurons will die anyway, because life is going to kill some neurons along the way. I have no desire to accelerate the process and cause additional neurons to unnecessarily die. There is no desire for that.

And you know, what I find interesting though is that these molecules open the possibility of— so somebody did a really nice, interesting study recently where they looked at deep breathing and whether the network activity in the brain with deep breathing is similar to what it is with psychedelics. And it is. And that tells you that essentially the network activity in the brain goes to a particular state, but there are many ways to also get to that state. The thing is, all those other ways require work. It’s a process, right? It’s not fast, like you induce and boom, and that’s transient, right?

So Swami Vivekananda said this, actually. Someone had asked him, saying, “If I can take this drug and I can see God, then why do I have to do all these rituals or whatever, meditation, etc.” So his point was actually very interesting. I might not say it as well as he said it, but what the point was that, okay, yes, you may take the drugs and have access to this mystical universe, but when you come back, you’ll just be the same person you were. But it’s when you do the work, it’s the work that transforms you. Yes, you get that access, but it is the work that has transformed you. That process is not something you can eliminate, and that is not to be sneezed at, right? So the meditative work takes work. You have to sit.

RAJ SHAMANI: Breathwork takes work. It takes work.

VIDITA VAIDYA: You have to sit with it. You can’t just say, I’ll just get wherever— it will take time to get to that location, and that work is worth it for the brain.

What Does a Happy Brain Look Like?

RAJ SHAMANI: True. Yeah, true. Here’s the last question. How does a happy brain look like?

VIDITA VAIDYA: You know, you’re asking the hardest question ever for two reasons. One, we have spent most of our time focusing on how a sad or a fearful or an anxious or an unhappy brain looks in animal models and in humans. We have a much better understanding of which part of the brain produces fear, which part responds to stress, where extinction of fear memories happens, where stress responses are controlled. We have far lesser understanding of which part of the brain is involved in the production of joy, contentment, happiness.

If you ask me to point out now, show me the part of the brain where contentment or acceptance or resilience or joy reside, I will struggle. And not just I will struggle, most other neuroscientists will struggle too, because we don’t have a location. Much the same way, if you tell me where does consciousness reside, I will also struggle. Partly because those are things we still don’t understand. Joy and happiness being an absolutely good example. The closest we are coming is we’re beginning to understand where empathy may be regulated. So it’s in the insula and those parts of the brain. Those emotions we’re beginning to explore. But happiness, contentment, and joy—

RAJ SHAMANI: You are asking the hardest questions. So you, as a neuroscientist, you’re telling me you have no clue how a completely happy brain looks like?

VIDITA VAIDYA: No, because first of all, to study happiness in a rodent is a hard ask, right? It’s a very hard ask. Even to study happiness in a non-human primate is a hard ask. What we do know is some parts of the brain that get activated when you are in a state of feeling happy. But those are many distributed circuits. There’s not one location in the brain where you can say, “Ah, this circuit gets activated, you will be happy.” There are many distributed parts of the brain that are activated when you say you are experiencing joy or experiencing happiness. Happiness and joy are not the same, but still. But we have a much better— if you tell me which circuit produces fear, I can pinpoint it.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, you told me already. It’s right there, right?

VIDITA VAIDYA: If you ask me which part of the brain is involved in fear production or even motivation, reward, addiction, I can point it out. We have disproportionately understood the negative emotions and where they sit and reside in the brain as compared to the positive emotions.

RAJ SHAMANI: Wow. I expected a very different answer. I wish it was a different answer. Yeah, like I expected—

VIDITA VAIDYA: But it’s hopefully a motivation for all your podcast viewers. Maybe some amongst your gang of podcast viewers will be future neuroscientists, and they’ll say, “How is it that after so many years of studying the brain, here’s a person who can’t answer this question?”

RAJ SHAMANI: Is it more because of Freud’s influence?

VIDITA VAIDYA: No, it’s just a consequence of the fact that negative emotions have been easier to study because they’re easier to read out, and there’s an obvious readout that is evolutionarily conserved. Very strongly, fear has been evolutionarily conserved across species. It’s easier to study. Joy is a difficult one to study. First of all, it’s hard to pinpoint any— your fear, my fear, the responses are similar. Your joy, my joy are not identical. Absolutely different. Very, very different. Very difficult to figure out. Much more distributed, much more variant, much more heterogeneous, not conserved across species the same way.

RAJ SHAMANI: Hard, hard question. Wow, what an end to the podcast. Very hard question. But thank you so much for spending time with me.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That was so much fun. That was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. That was great fun.

RAJ SHAMANI: Yeah, like first time I’ve seen a brain. What cut? You did very well.

VIDITA VAIDYA: That was actually a very steady hand.

RAJ SHAMANI: It went smooth because I was expecting that I might end up puking. Are you serious? Like for real? I was not able to take the— I told you, you know, my olfactory, my—

VIDITA VAIDYA: Yeah, you can smell that. You can smell it. Yeah, it smells like how hospitals smell. It smells— you have a little bit of that formaldehyde, kind of little bit of hospital, but little more than that.

RAJ SHAMANI: Like, I don’t know what it smells like. Thank you so much. Episode end. Number 1, subscribe. Number 2, please comment. Feedback or better experience create. And number 3, episode, I’ll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out.

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