Joe Rogan Experience #1344 — Joseph LeDoux Transcript

Transcript

0:00 here we go joe thank you thank you for being here really appreciate it man it's a pleasure to be So I'd been working on how the brain detects and responds to danger for most of my scientific that's controlling your behavior when in fact you didn't do it but that system did. So you protective defensive behaviors and including the ability to learn about them and store those as

2:52 the same molecules, same genes doing the same thing in ancient invertebrates and in animals like us. So it has kind of So those are two separate lines that inherited these genes that make the memory and defensive from? Well, if you go all the way back to where they came from, an even simpler kind of organism, and part of that first cell ever is still with us

6:31 hypothetical cell. It's called LUCA, the last universal common ancestor of life. Like what a weird sort of transformation. No, we're definitely not the goal. And you have to reproduce. And it was a lot of fun, but it took a long time. And that is what appears to be unique to the human mind, the ability to represent the self And it depends. but not necessarily that I want that food.

11:29 We think we know why the dog is doing that because it had some intention. And therefore, that the amygdala is also making the fear, It's completely wrong. And I kind of gave up after once. Companies are getting out of the Xanax business? the basic drugs were discovered in the 60s, and the ones that make the animal less timid in those situations is assumed to make the animal

15:26 but behavior is really a tool of survival. So they have the ability to detect what's useful and harmful in their lives. These are not there for psychology. They're simply there to keep the organism alive. And many of the behaviors that But the fear is a separate process. And what they bind to is You're not supposed to? She was flying to Africa, and she said, I'm going to Africa.

18:42 Do you know the story? Yeah, well, these are powerful drugs. things like the stuff the woman was saying more difficult because they're attacking the But if we want to understand how to do better, And I think that's a lot of what these medications can do is turn the volume down a bit or turn it up, you know, depending on what you do. And so you get this hangover the next day.

22:29 And that just makes room for – to fill that up. But just to go back to the fear threat example, that kind of masks it. It's about detecting and responding to danger. But these medications are very profitable, right? People enjoy it. Millions of prescriptions get they'll become generics, arousal that goes with that. Because if you don't treat that, then the conscious mind will be reactivated by those responses.

26:16 And he says he needs it. to believe that he needs that much like an alcoholic believes they need to drink yep And this is where our autonoetic consciousness comes in, our ability to think of ourselves as having a past and a future and to be able to plan and choose in the future. Yeah, and the ability to think about the possibilities, like what could go wrong, what could go right, am I doing the right thing?

29:13 almost always as soon as you're afraid that makes you anxious about what's to create art, to create architecture, build buildings, Is this because we evolved essentially without long-term travel? And if mine benefits, I don't want the other one to benefit because we've got to keep everything separate. consciousness and perhaps maybe work like yours giving us the tools to understand what are the

32:43 That's clearly things are happening. And that, you know, I read a couple of editorials, under those conditions. the waters are rising, the deserts are expanding, i think that we can use our minds to try and help us get through this. see that small successes i mean like auto companies deciding well we need to you know Social. How so? environment if that's technologically possible I mean that's going to come out

36:57 and what we've done and how to somehow or another mitigate it. and big business that they don't really think that it's a big deal or they want to deny that and then that thing is somebody else's thing. There's very little deviation. Right. That some primates are in what would be considered Stone Age. and then spearfishing. Yeah. what was required for language to come out of the

42:09 And personal pronouns are very important in terms of me, I, mine, you, yours. which is the ability to think across kind of conceptual categories, I think that's absolutely right, know the way you're supposed to treat the upper levels of management up and There's so many different ways that you were supposed to address them and that they had eliminated all that by using English. It's very different than the way people communicate, say, in some African countries. Right.

45:12 And the way fear is interpreted by different cultures Right. And so that person might be responding more to danger, in part because of genes, but also maybe because of experiences that they've had. You know what I mean? And a few years later, I started finding out from therapists that the – a lot of patients were reading the book with their therapist, and they were saying that it was really helping them understand how different things were happening, that the amygdala was causing them to react in certain situations.

49:09 Just had my hat and sunglasses on, just trying to chill out, meditate a little bit, get ready for you. Don't stink. Do you spend much time dwelling on the creation of those things and what's going on there? So we have psychopharmacology is a major line of attack, and also what's called cognitive behavioral therapy, which arose as a form first called behavioral therapy because it came out of the behaviorist movement, which said there's no consciousness,

51:14 And then cognition was added to that. So that became cognitive behavioral therapy. You know, the best medications and the best CBT trials will give you like 75% record of help in a group. whether it's meditation what are you doing you're trying to enact change right and if that change is Yeah, whenever you have – I think 75% is amazing. we need to know exactly what really works, what's different from placebo.

54:06 doesn't get the treatment so that you get that it's not really doing anything physiologically have you gone to therapy yourself i have yeah did you do that to examine this um i you know i i Yeah. relational reasoning to jump across. Language gave you categories to conceptualize things. and inherited that from animals. Right. The part of the brain that I think is important, and this is still a hypothesis, it's not a fact,

59:11 because they don't have those parts of the brain. or I can point to it. So I'm not saying they don't have anything, about observing behaviors What's the evidence? This happens and then up, I'm going to start crying. The problem is that our language is so bad that all these terms that we have, we borrow But when you're afraid, you're almost always running from the bear and feeling fear.

1:04:04 Yeah. But you can react to danger without the self. And that's what, you mean, that's your – and to be consciously afraid. But you can react to danger without the self. situation so now you're anxious about what's going to happen so you're not starting with fear you're But they're happening separately. underlie the conscious experience, but also the cognitions can trigger behavior. So, you know,

1:06:40 Subliminally. But it would have to go very fast in the film. And then, you'd have to go very fast in the film. but they they their conscious mind doesn't know it's happening because it's going through subliminally. So the amygdala is being tamed by the exposure, Because all of the impediments to all that have been put aside by these first two steps.

1:08:46 It's more, you know, it turns out that it's more about the ability to rapidly learn about those kinds of dangers than to innately respond. Let's say the rat has been given a tone that's been paired with a shock, They're not enough. That seems like an impossible task. Do you buy into that? cell and whatever kinds of electrical signals it's had throughout the life of the organism.

1:13:18 So it's not like one thing is programmed. It's not like a brain area is programmed. It's all about what's happened at those specific cells, both through genetics and experience. So we often kind of oversimplinid and now what we are now, and you think of all these various components that are at play, At some point we may split out into a whole new kind of human.

1:14:40 of a lot of experiences. They're thinking that's one of the main contributors to autism is older men. What are your thoughts on people that are trying to live longer But what about the people that can keep it together? Do you like the finite nature of this existence? but I'd rather just live most of my life That's got a big effect on anxiety and a big effect on just a general alleviation of angst.

1:17:27 Yeah. The entire month, no alcohol, no marijuana, no drugs, and crazy exercise. I exercise regularly, but I don't exercise at that level this and i don't recommend what we did because we were working out five hours, six hours You know, you just sit here and then you move to that spot. time in nature at all do you go to central park oh well we have a house up in sullivan county in

1:20:21 Then we want to come back. And go somewhere and just wake up in the morning, look out, see the ocean, have a cup of coffee. Yeah. What's like a tall building in Brooklyn? North Manhattan that looks like it's How many people are in Manhattan? something called a behavioral sink um it was about how rats living in an impoverished environment and then they measured the way people talk, how many syllables and how many sentences they can

1:23:58 That there's a profound effect. to get to the elevator afterwards. whereas this person maybe has a shit makeup and bad lifestyle choices, responsible for our greatest achievements as a species, but also is what will potentially do us in. personal good. For example, I think that the autonautic human mind is the only entity in the history of life that's been ever to put the organism, now we're talking about the conscious

1:27:32 Yeah, the conscious mind that seeks thrills, Our homeostatic levels are different. But, you know, we also have addictions in our lives that are habits and things that we develop and pursue that aren't necessarily good for us but that we kind of feel compelled to do. and he climbs these seemingly impossible mountains with no ropes, some dude who just needs to constantly – or a woman who needs to be constantly freaked

1:30:51 that females are attracted to men that do those crazy things and take crazy risks for some strange reason, everything's great and you have plenty of food and you live in cities and like okay look i'm not It's our ability to create things and our desire to create things. So then that allows them to figure out, Well, it's interesting, too. It's like anything that is novel that you do has a kind of charge effect to it,

1:34:27 My work is rather limited and all. I don't work on creativity and all these things. You have a beginning, and you just see where it goes. What do you got there for notes? Now, when you wanted to examine danger and you want to examine the mind It's a way to control epilepsy that can't be controlled in any other way. So information on one side doesn't cross over to the other.

1:37:59 Okay. the left of center goes to the right space because everything to the left of center What is life like for people once they've done that operation? Jesus. How does the left hemisphere cope with the fact that the right hemisphere has performed a behavior that the left hemisphere So that's why I got interested in how non-conscious systems would be generating behaviors

1:41:45 So our hypothesis was these narratives that the left hemisphere is generating about right anything about this i don't i'm sorry okay so there's a long article explaining this thing It would be like pulling the pants down with one hand and pulling them up with the other. and you know and it all kind of like over time they don't come back together but the some they

1:43:58 So for severe, severe cases. I'm really interested in the brain creating these narratives to explain. How we got to these narratives. Yeah. uh they've never offered it to me you You should demand it. Demand it. For my record with it, and Deep History they're love songs and then an acoustic duo awesome