Neuroscientist Explains MDMA and The Science of Social Connection | Dr. Ben Rein Ph.D.

What are some of the therapeutic benefits of MDMA? Also known as a MOLLE or Ecstasy. So MDMA is primarily and maybe only used or experimented for PTSD. It's not necessarily that the drug mechanism, what it's doing in the brain is like reversing trauma in the way that a painkiller is like kind of blocking pain signals. It's not like that. One of the reasons why it's so helpful for PTSD is being an empathicin and improving social connection. It allows the patient to connect with the therapist better. There's also evidence that MDMA turns down to make a lot of activity. You can sort of bypass that barrier and the alarm might be going off but it's a much quieter, softer alarm. You can get through it and you can touch the memory and revisit it and maybe even sort of reshape the way your brain holds that memory. Being isolated is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. What does that actually mean? When people are isolated, anxiety go up, depression go up, suicide go up, the body perceives isolation as a form of stress. Being isolated is associated with higher risk of mortality, which is more likely to die by any cause. Cause there, this is a really important point. ["Dark and Deep Music"] Dr. Ben Rain, neuro-scientist, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Let's talk about otherwise known MDMA. Long name, 3, 4, Methylene Dioxymethanphetamine. That's why they shortened it. Also known as a Mali or Ecstasy. Correct. What is it, where did it come from? That just the whole shebang, why do you care about it? So MDMA is a synthetic drug. It was synthesized by actually Merck Pharmaceutical Company in 1912. I was actually surprised to learn that as a MDMA researcher, I studied it in some work I led at Stanford. And when I found that out, I was like, wow, I really thought MDMA came from like a, like a meth lab or something, right? Like someone just like made it in like a trailer, like breaking bed. No, it was Merck. They, when they made it, they didn't realize what it was. They just, I think they were trying to make like blood thinners or something like that. And they just kind of shelved it, forgot about it for like 60 years. And then in the 70s, this chemist, Dr. Alexander Shulgin, came along and looked at the chemical structure of MDMA and realized that it was similar to mescaline, which is another really potent drug. And so he was talented enough to synthesize some MDMA on his own, tried it on himself, was understandably pleased with the outcome. And so he started distributing it to therapists in Northern California who started giving it to their patients. And that was sort of the first like observational studies, I guess, of what MDMA does, how it makes people feel. And they found that it made people feel, you know, euphoric, very socially connected, empathic. It was the first drug to be called an empathogen and one of the only in the world. Fast forward, it was obviously became illegal. Why? I think the partying and the illegal use sort of got out of control. And the truth is, I mean, three, four, methylene, dioxin, methamphetamine, notice the last couple of syllables, methamphetamine, it's very similar to meth. It's a stimulant. And so it has, it can have negative effects. It can definitely, like you can have a very bad experience and serious adverse health outcomes. Can you die? Yeah, I mean, theoretically, you could have a heart attack or something like that. I mean, like I said, it's a stimulant, right? It's a blood pressure heart rate. This is why oftentimes when you see, I'm not your ho, often you see people on MDMA, but for those out there who do. I don't, but yes. You know, the, Except for Matt, the producer just, I'm totally kidding. The typical MDMA like stereotype or idea is, you know, they're grinding their teeth, they're sweating, right? They're running around. It's a stimulant, right? It's, it is stimulating their heart rate and all that. So it can be dangerous. That was sort of recognized. And they said, all right, you know, this probably shouldn't be legalized. And then it kind of, you know, vanished from at least the clinical and scientific worlds for a while until I think late 2000s, like 2008 or so, was the first study MDMA for PTSD. And that is where the whole sort of MDMA science and psychedelic science reemerged and just exploded. And it's become a really significant part of science nowadays. What are some of the therapeutic benefits of MDMA? So MDMA is, I want to say primarily and maybe only used or experimented for PTSD. And the idea is that, you know, big misconception, people think, okay, MDMA for PTSD. So if I have PTSD and I take Molly at Lollapalooza or Coachella, I'm going to feel better after, right? But that's a big misconception. Cause MDMA, it's not necessarily that the drug mechanism, what it's doing in the brain is like reversing trauma, right? Like in the way that a painkiller is like reversing or kind of blocking pain signals. It's not like that. It's thought that there's two important things, set and setting. The set is sort of like the mindset that you go into the experience with. And this is by the way true for like all psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, you need to go in in this mindset of like I'm going to heal and setting where you are, what you're doing. What MDMA does is it makes everything euphoric. And if you're setting is that you're sitting with a therapist who you trust and who you know, and you are discussing whatever experiences you have been through that have driven that PTSD, you are better able to approach and sort of ruffle through these buried traumatic emotions because they're not painful. And there's a guy in this field named Ben Sessa. He tells this story where him and his buddies were sitting around on Molly and someone says, oh, think about your mom dying. And everyone was like, it's not bad. It's not so bad. And that's kind of a good idea of how to explain it that you can really do a lot more work therapeutically. So like I said, going to Coachella isn't the right setting you have to be there. It's illegal now. Is it used legally in particular settings with PTSD? It's still illegal in Australia. It has been legalized for clinical use. And so it is being used for this purpose for PTSD. We've not gotten there in the United States yet. There was a recent sort of controversial decision on this that basically it could have moved forward, but it wasn't. It was kind of stopped. And there's a lot of kind of outcry about that and whether it should have been moved forward. I mean, the reality is if you look at the clinical trials where people with PTSD have taken MDMA and been tracked and put in that right setting, it's unbelievable. The remission rates are super high. It is very clearly effective if administered properly. And the patient experience is the right one. But there's still some concerns about whether it's safe. And the research I was doing at Stanford was looking at empathy specifically. I mentioned that it's an pathogen. And so what we were trying to do is figure out what of the many things MDMA does in the brain, which of those is responsible for the changes in empathy? And the reason for that is because, so what MDMA does is it targets three systems primarily, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. It's not that those stimulant kind of harmful, unpleasant effects of MDMA are associated with the dopamine part. So the question is, well, what if empathy, the empathogenic properties, are not associated with the dopamine? And we could figure it out and then we could create a drug that's like MDMA and has those same properties of making people feel more connected and maybe even making those memories easier to process without having them sweating and grinding their teeth and their heart rate elevating. And so can we make a drug that basically is safer and has all of the great positive therapeutic properties of MDMA? And we made some good progress because we identified that the empathogenic properties are associated with serotonin and specifically serotonin release in a brain area called the nucleus accumbens. That's where we're at right now. The project is published and it's out there, but what next? I mean, I'm not personally involved in making drugs or anything like that. It would be interesting to know and to test what if we could create a drug that just stimulates serotonin and the nucleus accumbens? Because from what all of our research says, that drug would theoretically make people feel more connected and empathic and it would be a really powerful, unique pharmacological agent that nothing like that exists. Do we know why when an individual is exposed to trauma or whatever the cause is and then they come out with PTSD? Do we know why the brain seems to wire in this way where it seems to exist as a repetitive type of thought or hypervigilant experience? And then certainly there's a criteria, elevated blood pressure. Do we know why that happens? There are studies showing that those with PTSD show abnormal activity in the amygdala. I think they believe they show elevated activity in the amygdala, which would make sense. The amygdala is sort of like the brain's alarm system. It can function that way saying, this is bad, this is stay away. It's well connected with other brain areas to help motivate our behavior and cause us to not approach something that's scaring us or whatever it is. And so yeah, I believe it's one part of PTSD at least is some sort of abnormal rewiring of the amygdala and its function driving this hyperarousal, intense anxiety and fear around certain stimuli or memories associated with whatever that trauma stemmed from. And then MDMA allows you to access these memories or this experience and revisit it in a more empathetic or softer way. Is that how you would think about it? Yeah, I mean, there's also evidence that MDMA turns down amygdala activity. So you think about the amygdala as this alarm system that is kind of protecting you from revisiting something that was horrifying. So anytime you get close to it, the alarm sets off in your brain and you are shrinking away from that thought because it's just too painful to go anywhere near. But so with MDMA, if we can apply this sort of euphoric filter over everything and turn down the amygdala activity, you can sort of bypass that barrier and the alarm might be going off, but it's a much quieter, softer alarm where you can get through it and you can touch the memory and revisit it and maybe even in doing so, sort of reshape the way your brain holds that memory, I suppose. If maybe you can go back and you can remember certain parts of it that weren't so traumatic or you can kind of reprocess it through a different lens of, oh, that actually, that wasn't so bad and maybe it helped me see life differently that was positive. And that way, when you, after the experience is over, when you go there again and you try to access the memory, those alarm bells aren't ringing as strongly. They're kind of suppressed because you've now been able to kind of move it out from behind that alarm system and put it somewhere that you can access it comfortably. If you listen every week and feel like we are in this together, which I believe that we are, learning, growing and building strength, then I've created a way for us to get connected even more closely. It's called Forever Strong Insider, a premium community for listeners who want to go deeper. You'll get ad-free episodes, which I know you'll love, bonus Q and A's where your questions shape the conversation, behind the scene moments because let's face it, I'm hilarious for my daily life and written takeaways to keep at your fingertips. But more than that, you'll be supporting the show so that we can keep creating content that matters. If you've ever wanted it to feel part of the inner circle, this is your invitation. Join us at foreverstrong.supercast.com or through the link in the show notes. Is there an alternative to that that we have access to? Good question. I don't think so. I don't think there's anything like MDMA. Ketamine, any other psychedelics? Not for PTSD. So the psychedelic space is so interesting because all these drugs do different things and seem to be filtering down into what conditions they're useful for. Like ketamine has a totally different mechanism from MDMA it acts on. And it's an NMDA receptor antagonist, whatever. Some people care about it. Yeah, so NMDA receptors are excitatory. They turn neurons on. The mechanism of ketamine is so complicated, so I'll explain it and you can cut it out later if you want. These NMDA receptors, they activate neurons. Ketamine is an NMDA receptor antagonist, so it blocks those receptors, which you would think would turn down the activity of neurons. Turns out it actually has the opposite effect because it's doing that selectively to these neurons that are called interneurons, which turn down the activity of other neurons. So you're basically taking the activity, you're turning down the activity of neurons that typically silence other neurons. And so you end up with more activity overall. That's kind of the most important thing. You end up, ketamine increases brain activity. And so what ketamine does is creates a lot of neuroplasticity. It drives the formation of new synapses, the connections between brain cells where they interact. And that plasticity seems to be really important for ketamine's antidepressant effects. So there we go. MDMA is over here with PTSD. Ketamine seems to be most effective for depression. What about Alzheimer's if you're being able to develop new synapses? Good question. That's not recognized. And, or at least I don't recognize that as being something that's known, which tells me that probably clinical trials have been done, but I don't think it's going anywhere. And it might be because you have someone with Alzheimer's, you give them ketamine, they are detaching from reality. That could be a really harmful effect. Right, that could accelerate any kind of problem. We see these psychedelics and other agents important for PTSD, depression. Is it fair to say social connection? That's not really, I mean, okay, to be fair, that's not recognized as a disease, state or illness or problem, but I have heard people that I know say they go, they engage in these drugs and it's for the relationship, it's for connection. Yeah, no one's doing that. Legally. Legally, yeah, yeah. I mean, 70s and 80s, when those therapists were using MDMA in California, that's where a lot of it was going. Couples therapy, people were saying, oh my gosh, I can connect with my partner like never before. This is amazing. And that is nowhere near clinical relevance right now. It's really, I mean, the fact that it hasn't even been approved for PTSD, a condition that has severe effects. Consequences, yeah. Yeah, and consequences on people's lives. We're nowhere near approving it for couples therapy. But yeah, I mean, the fact that it is an pathogen, one of the reasons why it's so helpful for PTSD is being an empathogen and improving social connection. It allows the patient to connect with the therapist better. So imagine replacing the therapist with your partner and yeah, I mean, it could very much theoretically be useful for that kind of thing. Social connection is a big thing. You wrote a book on it, what's your book called? My book's called Why Brains Need Friends. And yeah, it's all about, you know, in the current world, we are super isolated. People keep saying it's important when it's bad, it's bad, but like why, right? What is the neuroscience? And I try to make it as clear as possible for everybody deserves to understand the science. You know, science is held behind paywalls and jargon. And you know, just like your book, you want to get the stuff out, you want to help people. Yeah, that's what I was hoping to do. You chose social connection. And there are a lot of layers to social connection. And I want to talk about what is authentic social connection? Is it authentic when you're through a screen? Do you really develop the tight relationship that you do when you're in person? And also just from an external perspective, I'm seeing across from you, you're smiling, you're eyes lighting up, hopefully my face is not frozen. But there are a lot of external changes that seem to be happening at faster rates. For example, Botox. Botox might paralyze someone's smile or plastic surgery might tighten the skin. Does that affect social connection? There's reason to believe that it does. So one of the really like unspoken things that happens when we interact is that our faces mimic each other. People don't know this because you don't realize it's happening. So like you're smiling right now and like I'm kind of smiling, but usually it's not that way where I can, I'm like actually smiling. What happens is these muscles in the face, when they detect, when our brain detects that you're making a facial expression, the muscles in my face will activate in the same direction. So if you're smiling, you know, the muscles that lift my cheeks or lift my lips in a smile, we'll start to activate in this very like imperceptible way, you know, it's just like electrical activity that science has discovered. But what's important about that is that information doesn't just travel from the brain to the face in that like the brain is happy, so the face starts smiling. It also goes backwards. You know, maybe you've heard of these studies where like if people look at cartoons, it's like a classic psychology study. They're looking at cartoons and they have to put a pencil between their teeth. So they're artificially made to smile. And the people who did that rated the cartoons as funnier, because the brain is processing, oh, I'm smiling, so this must be funny, right? This must be pleasant. So that's kind of what's happening here, that when we mimic someone's facial expression, our brain starts to detect that we are feeling the same emotion. And this is one of the critical pieces of empathy and something called emotional contagion where you basically take on someone's emotions. With Botox, you're essentially paralyzing the muscles. You're interfering with the ability for those nerves from the brain that control the muscle to send those messages. And so your muscles kind of are, you know, they're not moving. And because of that, you are interfering with your brain and your face's ability to mimic expressions. And so there are studies showing that people with Botox have a harder time basically reading, properly reading what expressions other people are making and what their internal state is, which is interesting, because you think that all that stuff lives in the brain, but a lot of the information lives in the muscles in the face. It's challenging because it's not perceivable, right? This is outside of our conscious control. If we are in front of screens all day long, we have access to more people. On social media, we have more people coming into our sphere than ever before. Does that affect social connection? You mean the sheer volume? Yeah. I don't know, that's a good question. I mean, you know, there's this idea that the human brain is only capable of knowing so many people, right? And I do think that what happens when we're online, especially because I'm sure you speak in front of large crowds often, it's different when you're standing in front of 5,000 people versus when you post something on social media and it says 5,000 views, right? It's completely different. And there's this sort of like depersonalization that happens online where it just becomes, you know, your brain can't compute what it is. Like these aren't real people, these are just numbers on my screen. And the idea of having a million people see a piece of content is dramatically different impact on your emotional wellbeing. I don't think that's very good. I think that a lot of the important signals that tell our brains you are interacting with the human being, they are removed when we're online, right? Like even this one-on-one interaction, there's facial expressions that can sense your vocal tone, your body language, right? There's so much information, whereas on social media, and let's say on Twitter, you're interacting with someone and you're just messaging back and forth. I mean, you don't have any of those signals. And so your brain is not necessarily interpreting to the full extent that this is a person you're interacting with, right? And it actually could be a bot, right? But I think that the absence of those signals makes a difference. And I actually, I published this hypothesis a year or two ago, I called it the virtual disengagement hypothesis, basically saying that because of the absence of those social cues, there's no reason that the brain's empathy systems should be activating at all when we interact online. Pause, pause there. This is a really important point. Thank you to BonCharge for sponsoring this episode of the show. And if you've been following me for a while, you know that I take light exposure seriously. Why? Because it impacts your sleep, your hormones, your mood, your ability to recover and focus. It doesn't just affect you, but it also affects your kids. And that's why I use BonCharge. They've created science-backed tools that help balance our modern industrialized lives from harsh indoor lighting to too much screen time. Their blue light blocking glasses are a nightly ritual for me. And my kids borrow mine. They help calm my nervous system, protect my circadian rhythm, especially if I just happen to look at my screen, which we all know that never happens. I also love their red light lamp. I turn them on as soon as it gets dark and I use the big panels 10 to 20 minutes each day. They are some of the best red light products I have ever used, low EMF on the market. And right now, BonCharge is having their holiday sale. So you can save a massive 25% off. Just head to boncharge.com and your 25% off code will automatically be added to your order. This sale will end on the 31st of December, 2025. So hurry and don't miss this chance to save on your favorite BonCharge products. Typically someone would not come up to you and go, wow, you're just a total a-hole. Go hide in your closet and never come out. But online, people do that. But in real life, we hope that there is empathy. Is that what you're talking about? Exactly, yeah. And this came to me as a person who was at Stanford spending my days studying empathy, trying to figure out how can we enhance empathy, thinking about the brain systems that drive empathy. And then I post on social media, I post educational neuroscience videos and I would look in the comments and I'm like, oh my goodness. You just broke rule number one, never look at the comments. Right, I know. But in a lot of the time, it's not even about me. I mean, the comments about me, whatever. It stings, but it is what it is. But the people in the comments going at it with each other, it's so unlike typical human exchange that it made me wonder what is going on here. And I started poking around the literature and found that what I just said, basically facial expressions activate these empathy related brain areas. Vocal tone activates the brain, it's empathy related brain areas. And so when you strip all those things away, why would these areas be activating? Why would we experience empathy and care for someone else's emotions? And I think what this kind of amounts to is like, we are not there for what I call the stepping on the tack phase of the interaction. So imagine you're in elementary school and you wanna play a prank and so you set a tack upright on the ground or on your friend's chair or somewhat your classmates chair, maybe not your friend. And they don't sit on it. Two hours later, the next student comes in the classroom, you're long gone, student sits down on the tack. They start screaming, they go to the nurse, they're in horrible pain. You have no idea that this happened. You're in the other room, you're directly responsible, but you don't know that it happened. Do you feel empathy? No. Of course not. There's no reason, it's like does a tree in the woods make a sound, right? If you're not there to witness this person's pain, suffering, even though you caused it, your brain has no reason to feel empathy or make you feel empathy. And I think that's what basically happens with social media, that you can leave a horrible comment on someone's post, you can place a tack and you're not there for them to sit on the tack. You would do not witness their emotions, but what I do think is possible is once you realize, oh my gosh, I hurt this person. If they comment to you and say, that really hurt my feelings, yada yada, I do think it's possible to then realize, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Not to the full extent that seeing them crying, experiencing their vocal tone, all that would make your brain feel bad, but to some extent you would feel bad. And I think that's where cognitive empathy comes in, which is a whole other topic. In relation to sitting down and writing a post, having someone say a terrible comment, let's say this person continues to do that, is that I always think that humans are able to evolve and that they're able to evolve in their environment. You know, it's a catch-22 because we've become very sedentary and arguably we're, quote, adapting to that environment. We now have a landscape of AI of technology. Do you think that that is going to change our brain in a positive, negative way? Will it affect mental health? Humans shouldn't be able to make an absolutely atrocious comment and then be off the hook. Because that doesn't really happen in real life. That doesn't happen. I would only imagine that if that type of person is doing that, they are doing that multiple times a day, maybe they're getting hooked into doing it. I am sure that there is a sequelae or there's some kind of outcome cognitively for them. Yeah, I think so. Specifically for younger people, I think. Empathy is not necessarily something that we're born with. We're born with the capacity for empathy. How would you define empathy? Empathy is the ability or the experience of really understanding someone's emotions or taking on their emotions. And I just mentioned cognitive empathy is understanding their emotions, right? So let's, in the TAC example, right? Let's say you see a friend step on a TAC. You see their expression, right? They probably, they make some sort of like, ouch, they start reaching for their foot, right? You can tell that they're hurt. Cognitive empathy is that is pain. I am recognizing pain, that's what they're experiencing. Emotional empathy is you feeling this sense of sort of revulsion, right? Of like, oh my gosh, that, you know, and to really kind of make this clearer, let's replace the TAC with like a gigantic thorn, right? Imagine someone stepping on a thorn. It goes through their foot. It's horrific. You're in the room. You're gonna feel bad, right? You have a sudden emotional impact of, oh my gosh, this feels terrible. That's emotional empathy. So you're stepping into their space. We have these two different forms of empathy, cognitive and emotional empathy. And we have the capacity for both, right? We are born with the capacity to learn them. And that's the key word, learn. We're not born with a certain amount of empathy. A certain amount, sure, right? Cause as a baby, you kind of like naturally mimic facial expressions and stuff, but really empathy is shaped by our experiences to a large extent. And you know, there's evidence that children with more emotionally responsive parents show greater empathy because it's sort of like, you're demonstrating empathy, right? You're demonstrating that the baby is sad, you get sad, the baby realizes, oh, they're kind of responding to my emotions. And so you learn. And of course you can imagine, you know, you're off to elementary school. It's your first day of first grade and you push a kid down the slide and the kid starts crying and you get reprimanded and you're like, oh, that wasn't good. And that kid feels bad and now I'm sorry, right? We learn empathy through social experience. And so to answer your question of, are there long-term sort of repercussions to this environment? I worry about kids. I worry about young people who are just sort of, you know, reaching adolescents, maybe around now, who they have had, especially you added COVID into that where they were isolated for a long time and a lot of their interactions came online. Now they're re-entering this world where again, a lot of their interactions come online. Social media is a major part of their everyday life. And I worry about what happens to a brain that learns empathy through a social context. That's not something we have scientific answers to yet. And it may be impossible, right? Because it'll be like an entire generation. David Eagleman talks about this, that we can't really study the effect of social media because there are very, there's really no group that we can use as a control group that wasn't affected by social media. And so, you know, maybe we should be taking some metrics right now so that in 20 years, we can compare the future society. But it's concerning for me. Is there ever a time or has this ever been studied? Can there be too much empathy? People can definitely feel like they're experiencing too much empathy. And a lot of people do. You know, when I post on social media about empathy, I have a lot of people comment and they're like, can I reduce my empathy? Like how do I make this stop? Because I'm always feeling so bad for people. It's not like a recognized, you know, DSM-5 condition, right? But you know, I think empathy is a strength. I like to debunk this notion. Probably depends on what your business is though. You're right, you're right. But for humanity as a whole, right? Yeah, I would agree. Because without empathy. So again, think about the stepping on the thorn example. If you felt nothing in response to watching your friends step on a thorn, you would have no personal stake, no personal motivation to step in and help them, right? Feeling bad makes you say, oh gosh, this person needs help and frankly, if I help them, it will alleviate this uncomfortable feeling I'm experiencing, right? That's sort of the evolutionary purpose of empathy is to motivate us to help others by giving us a personal stake. We have an emotional reaction. But on the other hand, if we had too much empathy, like you're asking about, like imagine your friends steps on the thorn and you feel the sensation of the thorn piercing through your foot, way too much empathy. Now you're gonna go the opposite way. Instead of helping that person, you're gonna run away. You're gonna be like, I'm not going anywhere near that. That felt horrible. I don't wanna expose myself to it. We would have no doctors, you know, nobody would watch UFC or MMA matches, right? Our entire society would be different. So I think we're in the Goldilocks zone. You know, it's like, it's not too hot, it's not too cold, we have the perfect amount of empathy. But of course, we exist in a range. There's a spectrum, like any biological trait, you know, some people are really extroverted, some people are really introverted, some people have a ton of empathy, some people have less empathy. And you were saying that there's a neurobiological component to empathy because there's the, what did you call it? The- My hypothesis? No, the empagin. What was the empathy pill? What was it? Empathogens. Empathogens. Yes. That's related to serotonin. Yes, so MDMA, that's what my research discovered, is that the reason MDMA makes people more empathic is because it enhances serotonin release in this brain area called the nucleus accumbens. If you're like me, you love a good meat stick and are always on the go, but still committed to putting high quality fuel into your body, then you wanna check out Pelio Valley, one of the sponsors of the show. Their 100 grass fed and finished beef sticks are clean, nutrient dense, and free from all the garbage found in most convenient snacks. And by the way, this is Buffalo chicken, no preservatives, no added sugar, no artificial anything. They are naturally fermented, which means they support your gut, deliver more bioavailable nutrients, and of course have a long shelf life without the use of harmful additives, which is amazing. Pelio Valley sources from regenerative farms here in the US, the kind of farms that treat animals humanely and prioritize soil health. It's like going to the farmer's market, getting a good quality snack, and it's delivered right to your door. Go to peliovalley.com slash drlion to get 15% off. That's peliovalley.com slash drlion. Something like a SSRI, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Would that also increase quote empathy? Theoretically it would, although to, you know, you can't really compare the serotonin dumping effects of the two drugs, because MDMA is way, way, way more intense. It's like taking like six months of serotonin, or of SSRIs all in one span of a couple hours. Don't do that. Do not do that. Yes, please no. But there is some research showing that SSRIs do have sort of pro-social effects. They can at least, of course, you know, there's a lot of people who have used SSRIs, many people who have had success, many people who have not had success. And so what I'm about to say doesn't necessarily apply to everybody, but there's research showing that people who take SSRIs, they show these like pro-social benefits. So for example, there's one study where they had people do this incredibly frustrating task of both having one hand on an etch a sketch and trying to draw an object together, which in a stranger, right? Imagine how frustrating that would be. And what they found is they gave half the people SSRIs for a few weeks before, and the other half placebo. And they found that those on the SSRIs were basically just a lot more like understanding and they were much less likely to sort of lash out and be demanding at the person. Does that mean that it increases their empathy or does it mean that it just kind of calmed them down and they were more tolerant? I don't know. But in another study, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of like the trolley problem where there's this idea of you have five people sitting on the train tracks, a train is coming towards them. You can pull a lever to divert the train. And instead of killing five, it'll just kill one person. So you can save four lives, but you have to pull the lever yourself. A lot of people, as bad as that sounds, they will pull the lever, they will say that they will pull the lever. Obviously this is not a real situation that scientists are creating, but in an alternative version of this, they make it more personal, where instead of pulling a lever, you have to push a person in front of the train to block it. So it's much more personal act, horrific act, and people on SSRIs rate that as much less acceptable. They say that they're much less likely to agree to doing that kind of thing, which is sort of pro-social. It's inherently pro-social, right? You don't wanna engage in this horrific social act. And this makes sense because this serotonin in the nucleus accumbens that we found to be important for empathy. There's also research from the same lab. So I was working with Dr. Rob Malenka at Stanford and Boris Heifetz also at Stanford. And Boris Heifetz did this project where he basically found that the serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens is also important for just like social motivation. And sorry, also Dr. Jess Walsh, gotta credit these scientists for their good work. And you guys will always hear that the really good scientists always credit other people. And I mean, I frankly think that that's what a true expert does. Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah. And you and I both know this to be true. And the people that sit and don't stand on the shoulders of giants and make it all about them or not. Yeah, totally. The other, another good sign of an expert is saying, I don't know, right? If you ask me a question, I'll probably say I don't know here today just to make myself look like an expert. So there's these studies that show that, yeah, that serotonin release in this brain area not only drives empathy, but drives social sort of interest. And by the way, this is in mice because we can't do these studies in humans where we can like manipulate serotonin activity. But if you basically give the mouse a choice between they can come over here and they can interact with the mouse or they can come over here and play with a little like wooden block or inanimate object. If you stimulate that serotonin, they'll start going over here and hanging out with the other mouse. And actually, interestingly, if you give them mouse over here, MDMA, if you give them both MDMA at the same time, then they spend even more time together. Like the other mouse. That's wild. Yeah. Some of the research in mice is unbelievable. Social connection you said is important. A lot of people watching this, I don't know, want to be better at relationships and they want to be better at dating. How do they become better at creating more meaningful social connection? This is kind of half of the purpose of my book. Half of it is to get people to understand this matters. And then the other half is sort of like, and it's not split in half. It's kind of woven together, but it's like, here's what you need to know about improving your life. And so I'm trying to think of like what piece I can give. I mean. I'll give you an example as to why I asked this question. I've heard people talk about neurolinguistic programming. I don't know the details of it, but it seems as if it's a way of creating a connection to bring people along. Maybe you're more familiar with it. I might know that by another name. Yeah, I'm not sure. This year has me saying I don't know. But it's ways, I don't want to say it's a form of manipulation, but I do believe it's a way of learning how to relate to people that create a close connection that may or may not be authentic, but the one individual is trained to do that. Okay. So this is not like authentic relating. We want authentic related. Right, right. Because authentic relating is a thing that sounds similar where it's like this practice of relating authentically. I mean, I will say, I'll say that being authentic is important. There's a whole chapter in the book on the science of likability and what makes someone likable. And a big part of it is basically how easy to read someone is. It's sort of, this is like my read of the literature. That, because some of the things that make people more likable, they are more emotionally expressive. Like they are, their facial expressions tell you a lot. They are perceived as being authentic. They are talking actually more. You would think that people like you, if you talk less, it's actually good to talk more, obviously too with threshold. You don't want to be talking 100% of the time and bothering someone. You know, when someone's really emotionally expressive and their facial expressions are telling you what they're thinking and you can just read it right on their face and you perceive them to be authentic. Like that is a brain's dream. All right, it takes away all of the anxiety of like, dude, can I trust this person? Are they really saying what they're saying? And so that also contributes to likability. There's a bunch of other things too, you know, and this is one of those things where like the chapter is way better than my brain because it's all there. But you know, like your appearance, kind of unfortunately. Well, what does that mean? Are people who look a certain way more likable? People who are deemed more attractive are more likable. You know, we have this, our brains have this sort of this tendency to take information and extrapolate it to a person, right? So this happens all the time, by the way. So for instance, if you see a person who, you know, just to go there, but a really salient one, let's say they're wearing a shirt or a hat of a political party you don't agree with, right? And so your brain is naturally saying, they're in the outgroup and you're probably going to assume that this person is horrible in so many ways, right? The brain just extrapolates this. Another example of this is like, also, gonna get myself in trouble here, but there's no scientific term for resting bitch face. But you see someone with a facial expression that says, I'm upset and people who, you know, when they're being seen as, when their facial expression looks unhappy, they are perceived to be less, uh, affiliative, they're perceived to be less like friendly in general, which is totally obviously false. And so that happens with beauty as well, with attractiveness. If someone is perceived as more attractive, you tend to give them all sorts of benefits, you know, people, they'll be judged as more trustworthy, more likable, you know, all sorts of things that are probably not true, but. What about fitness level? I wonder if people that have more muscle or who look fitter are considered more likable. That's a good question. I don't remember seeing any research on that when writing the book, but I would bet that that's a complicated one, where there's probably a lot of like personal identity tied to that, right? So if you are a person who exercises and lifts weights and you're proud of your physique and you have built muscle and you see someone with muscle, you're probably like, oh yeah, like I respect that person. But if you're the opposite and you feel bad about yourself because you're not working out enough and you know, you struggle with that and you see someone who's really fit, you're probably like that damn person, right? I did not know that about likability. What you're saying is that someone could become more likable if they are more expressive. I'll give you an example. My husband who was a seal for 10 years, if you look at his face, he's like this. I mean, I don't know if you would call it resting bitch face, but even when we started dating, I would say that he's not someone who emotes. And a lot of guys are that way. And if they wanna get better at dating or get better at finding a partner, they probably should learn some of these skills. Yeah, expressing your emotions through your face is, I mean- But would someone practice that? I don't know. I mean, I'm a pretty expressive person, right? Immediately likable. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, so I can't imagine doing that. I don't know, I guess, but I kind of could at the same time because it's like right now I'm on camera. I'm probably emoting more than I normally would. I think it's, I mean, it's totally doable. Some of the things that are linked to likability are things we can control and some of them are not. What are, and the things that we can control are- There's a whole bunch of them. I mean, aside from- Give me your top three. Okay, number one is, I've already covered it. I mean, expressiveness and being, just being open and being authentic. I'll just cluster all those into one. Another that's really funny is mimicry. Not the kind of mimicry I mentioned before, but so there are studies where person comes into the lab, they're meeting with someone, they don't know the person they're meeting with as an actor or an actress. At the end of the time, they are asked to rate how much they like the person. The whole experiment was about is that the actor or actress was mimicking their body position all the way along. So like right now, like I could do this, right? And if I did this for the majority of the interview and you change into a different stance and I kind of follow suit, right? And we find each other, interestingly, in the same bodily position a lot, you will probably rate me as more likable at the end of this. I have actually read that. There's a lot of confusion about protein. What kind, how much and when. This episode is brought to you by Body Health and we're gonna talk about what the science shows. Total daily protein intake is the foundation for building and maintaining muscle. But factors like amino acid profile and how quickly those amino acids are delivered and influence how efficiently your body uses that protein. Your body breaks down protein into amino acids and then rebuilds new proteins into muscle, bone and other tissues. The body requires nine essential amino acids and each do a different thing. And that's where Perfect Aminos comes in. It delivers all nine essential amino acids in the precise ratio your body needs, providing rapid absorption and of course, high utilization. So if your goal is to build and protect muscle while of course optimizing recovery and body comp, Perfect Amino can help make every gram count. Head to bodyhealth.com and use the code LION20 to get 20% off your first order. Number two, the second thing is, again, I hit on this already, but speaking, how much you're talking, right? People often think that if you wanna be better liked, you should allow the other person to have the spotlight and talk more. But when this has been manipulated experimentally, where people come in, they have conversations and they are assigned to talk for, there's literally a timer that controls how much they talk and it's anywhere from like 30% to 70% of the conversation. What turned out was actually people who spoke more like 50, 60, 70% were actually better liked. Again, don't overdo it. Another good thing to do is asking questions. So when you are talking a lot, you can be sure to shift the spotlight to the other person, right? Ask them a question. And then lastly, the third thing, the brain gives so many benefits to people who are similar to us. So this is, I mean, for likability, for empathy. So there's this idea of self other overlap where if you think of a- Self other overlap. Yeah, so if you think of a Venn diagram, right? You are one circle, I am the other circle, there's an intersection, right? What do you and I have in common? The greater the overlap, the larger the center area, not only the more likable someone is, you're gonna proceed them, you're gonna like them better, but also there's a bunch of research in empathy showing that basically the brain's empathy areas will turn on more readily for that person. You will experience more empathy. Give me an example. I don't know if we had equal amounts of facial hair, which I hope would never happen. Something like that. Well, I could shave. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably pretty low on the list, right? But it could matter, right? I mean- Would it be the same brand of clothing? Are we talking about with the Venn diagram of the connection, the intersection between the two? Self, what was it? Self other overlap. Self other overlap, meaning what is similar about you and I? Is that we both like the doors? Or we both like, I don't know, Vin Diesel? It can be, I love Vin Diesel. It can be everything, but I would say there's like a sort of a hierarchy, right? Where like, what's the top? It depends on who you are, right? So let's say you are Jewish and you're really religious and you find out that someone else is Jewish, that sort of sort to the top, you're immediately gonna probably see a huge self other overlap, right? Nutrition. Yeah, nutrition, right? You eat the same diet and you understand you both are highly trained in nutrition. Totally, yeah, it's very subjective, but that's what's important about it, is that it is subjective. So you can meet someone who you actually have a lot in common with, but you find out that, going back to this really well suitable example, they have totally different politics from you, but you are otherwise like almost the exact same person. If you care a lot about politics, then you might not like them, even though you have a lot in common. I think one way to sort of remedy a lot of our cultural problems in America nowadays is to like look beyond those sort of top of mind things, right? Because you probably do have a lot in common. And I would say it can really be anything. I mean, it depends on what you're sort of paying attention to. Is it what is an order of importance to the person? For example, if I'm someone who likes to train, I like to lift weights. And I find out that you like to lift weights. The things that are important to me in the same magnitude would be important to you. Is that how you have someone think about it? If I don't know, someone is watching this and they go, oh gosh, I really like this person. I really like this girl. I am not so great socially. I'm not so great in terms of expressing my authenticity, but I know that we have a lot of things in common. And going to those things would create this connection and likability. Yeah, I mean, it's about the way you view your identity, right? So forget about the Venn diagram. Let's just think about the self, right? What makes up you? There's probably a few things that come to mind immediately. Maybe it's, I doubt it's your favorite TV show, right? That's probably not the first thing that comes to mind, but there's a handful of things that come to mind. So that is your identity. And so how much does your perception of the other person's identity match with that? And yeah, so if you're looking to kind of win favor, and by the way, I do sort of discourage, like manipulating these factors. I totally disagree with you. You're not manipulating. I am telling you, my husband was, for example, the best choice that I have made in my life so far, aside from studying nutritional sciences, he is not good at dating. And there it was no way for the first two months when he expressed interest, I told him, don't ever call me again, right? And part of that was because he was a seal and blah, blah, blah, but also he wasn't that good interpersonal. He was very stoic. That is not romantic. And also it gives off serial killer vibes. I don't want, and again, he was a great choice. And I feel for a lot of the guys that cannot kind of overcome or are maybe not programmed to be as warm and open with their talking and their feeling. They're just, it's a skill, especially with social media. They don't have to have that. Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a sort of like pressure, not even a pressure, there's like a desire in men to be mysterious. Some men have that pressure, you know? I'm not that kind of person. Like I will share all my information here, like with an audience, doesn't matter to me, but there's definitely a type of guy that wants to be that. And I think there's also like sometimes that's really intriguing to a partner, right? Sometimes people go for that. But I think in general, if you want like authentic connection, it is good to be open and to be expressive and smile and whatever and be yourself too. I appreciate you saying that you shouldn't, a guy shouldn't do this to, you're not encouraging anyone to manipulate. And I would disagree and say, you're not manipulating. You are learning how to be a better communicator and more likeable with this self other overlap. Is there more to this self other overlap? Just in the empathy component, you know? And that's where it's really, I like to highlight that because I think you think, you know, we've been talking about how can you bring, what happens when these circles are really close together? But let's also think about what happens when these circles are very far apart. If you perceive someone as having very little in common with you, your brain's empathy systems are legitimately gonna be more resistant to firing up. You are less likely to experience empathy. And so I think that's concerning. The reason for that probably is evolutionary, right? Long, long time ago, when we lived in tribes, you know, you come across a member of the opposing tribe who has been hurt and if your brain says, oh, I feel so bad for this person, I wanna help them, you could be actually jeopardizing the wellbeing of your tribe. So it's actually beneficial. Like at some point, the fittest humans, right? Survival of the fittest were the humans who had the most empathy for their own group and didn't care about the others because it allowed that group to survive. And so now we live in a very different world, right? We do not live in tribes. We live in very blended, mixed cultures. And so when you see someone who's very different from you and your brain's empathy systems don't turn on, that was great, you know, a couple hundred thousand years ago, but not anymore. And I think that's concerning. And so, because again, empathy is what brings us together. It's one of the things that allows us to survive so well in groups and it's also something that's kind of absent in, not absent, but it's declining in modern culture. Do we know that to be true? It's been kind of bouncing around, but there is some research showing that it was like on the steady decline throughout the 2010s. And then I think a recent survey show that it had come back up, but I think that last survey was a couple of years ago. And I don't know, I mean, from the feeling of being a human in America, it feels a bit like it's declining. Any other tips or tricks or things that we should know about about how we can be more likeable? There's something called the likability gap. This has been discovered again, crediting Dr. Erica Boothby. This idea is that people underestimate how well liked they are. People underestimate. Yeah. Not the narcissist. Right, on average. The average human being, you know, if you pull people and ask them, they have an interaction and then you ask them after, how much do you think that person liked you? They're gonna score lower than the person actually scored them. And so, it's very common to not think that you were very well liked. You know, it's very easy to doubt yourself, but most often the other person actually probably likes you better than you think. Meat Peak, a luxury brand transforming wellness with the absolute best, rare and precious plants. It has cutting edge ingredients and formulations rooted in traditional wisdom. They have botanicals, minerals and vitamins, all that support sustained energy and radiant skin. Peak is proud to introduce Sun Goddess Matcha, an organic ceremonial superfood blend that adds some beauty to your daily ritual. It is crafted from the purest tea leaves. It provides a smooth sustained energy for calm mind and beautiful skin. They have the purest cup. The ceremonial grade matcha is 100% organic and grown in a pristine valley, ensuring that you get the cleanest purest cup ever. And 20% off, lifelong with a complimentary gift, peaklife.com slash Dr. Lion for 20% off, try it. It tastes amazing and I'm telling you, I think you're gonna glow. What is the evolutionary upside of that, of having a likability gap? I think it's anxiety. I think that it benefits us to care a lot about how we perform socially, right? Cause again, the reason that we get benefits so much from interaction is because we are wired for it. We are, our brains reward us for being around others because at one point being around others was the only way to survive. And so we care whether we are liked, you know, we want to be liked and we have, everybody has some level of social anxiety. You know, it's almost impossible to leave a social interaction and be like, I did perfect. Not my husband. Some people can do it. Sounds like your husband's quite the anomaly. I'm totally kidding. I'm just thinking on him. Cause again, he doesn't even listen to this podcast, but he does. You might, I might send him this episode so you can know what's really going on. I think he represents a lot of the guys out there. And I just want to make sure that this topic is so fascinating. I'm glad you think so. This is what drove me to study neuroscience. You know, I always thought it was interesting. Which part? The social element, you know, just sort of why everyone's different, you know, why is your husband such a different person than let's say me or anyone else? I mean, and it started when I was young, when I was in elementary school, I remember legitimately I can like see it looking around my cafeteria and seeing, you know, some clusters of my classmates who were really loud and, you know, having a good time and laughing and then other clusters who were, you know, kind of seated more sparsely. They're, you know, one or two in a long table, not really interacting with each other. And I thought, well, at first I remember thinking, you know, where do I stand on this sort of continuum? And then why is, why does this even happen? You know, how come in this class of 300 kids or whatever? There's clicks. There's, yeah, and there's so much difference, right? And obviously when I was, I don't know, 10 years old, I wasn't thinking about it like from a neuroscience lens. But now I am where it's like that just difference I noticed legitimately reflects changes in brain activity and the way these kids brains work based on their genetics and their lived experience and the way they were parented and their, you know, innate levels of extroversion and all sorts of things that originally got me to study psychology because I was admittedly kind of afraid of neuroscience. I thought it was intimidating. And then in my second year of undergrad, I had a nightmare that was so horrifying and jolting that I woke up and I laid in bed all night and I thought, how did my brain do that? How did my brain just create this environment that I was engaging with? And they were characters and storylines. And I was having dialogue and I was thinking, I was behaving like I was conscious in a world that my brain was simultaneously creating. And I just thought that was the most impressive thing. It pulled me out of thinking, oh, why do the kids at this table talk less? And why do the kids at this table talk more? It's not about behavior. In that moment, for me, it became about the brain. You know, this organ is just unbelievable. And so I ended up shifting to neuroscience and then combining the two and studying the neuroscience of social behavior. And it's your review to write this book. You had said that your goal is number one, to really understand the social connection and how to be better at it. These are things I have never heard about. And I tried, I studied psychiatry for two years as a psychiatrist, believe it or not, psychiatry resident. We had never learned about the likability gap or this self other overlay or self other overlap. The likability gap, why does it exist? For us to do better, be more vigilant. And I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, no, no, that's fine. I mean, I think we should be motivated to connect, right? We are better off together in so many ways. You know, a couple hundred thousand years ago, it meant we were more likely to survive. Now it means our brains are healthier. You know, and there's a ton of research showing that more isolated people are less healthy in many ways we can go there too. But I think, you know, we have systems in our brain that when we are around, when we're around others, we experience social reward. We experience our brain's release neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin that make us feel good and say, let's do this again. And so people leave interactions in a better mood. On the other hand, when people are isolated, they feel much worse. Their rates of anxiety go up, depression go up, suicide go up, all sorts of negative effects. And the body perceives isolation as a form of stress. It activates the HPA axis. It drives cortisol levels up. We feel worse. We have health effects. And I think that's our brain's alarm system saying you are alone, go find community because you're more likely to survive in community. Again, based on long history of roots. And so I think this liking gap is maybe the brain's way of saying, you can never get too comfortable. Right? If you are cast out from your tribe, you could die. And so for you to make sure that you're pleasing the people around you and that you're comfortably situated and safely situated in your community, you should always maybe underestimate how safe you really are so that you can continue to work harder. But I think that can also be to our detriment. You know, one of the chapters in the book, I lay out all these shortcomings of our social brains and we tend to do all sorts of things. We tend to think in certain ways that's unhealthy for connection. You know, we, so we like, for instance, we underestimate the value of an interaction. We always think that scientifically on average, people don't expect that interacting with someone else will make them feel as good as it actually does. For some reason, we underestimate it. Does it have to be, is it a text exchange? Is it a zoom? Is there something about being physical and in-person? Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. We get the most mood benefit from interacting in-person. So generally the less lifelike it is, so like a text is much less lifelike than a zoom, for instance, the less lifelike, the less benefit we experience. But having some form of interaction, even if it's just a text, is still better than none. You know, I definitely encourage like wherever possible, try to replace virtual digital interactions with in-person interactions for sure. You were mentioning the things, negative things that we do. Did we complete the positive for increasing our likability? Have we gotten to a handful of them, which again, I think are extraordinary. We ended on the likability gap. Is there anything else that we need to be aware of to improve our chances of deep authentic connection? Nothing I can think of. I mean, I think a lot of the other things are more, they're less impactful and they're sort of less controllable. And you know, yeah, things like your name, for instance, like you can be judged by your name, where like- Give me an example. So there's research showing that people who are, who have more difficult to pronounce names are judged as being less trustworthy. And if you ask people to classify traits, like respectful, trustworthy, attractive, whatever, honest, positive traits, and you give them a name, they are more likely to assign positive traits to more common names. So on paper at least, having less common names or having more difficult to pronounce names could affect how you are judged. Also, I guess names have this sort of inherent attractiveness to them. Some names are- They do, I mean, I agree with that. Yeah, and so some names are judged as more attractive. And there's like research showing that even if you take a picture of someone and you change the name that you pair with it, especially for women, it can have a significant effect on how attractive people view them. So if you take the same woman's picture and you put a traditionally less attractive name with that image or a really attractive name, it can make like a 10% difference in how attractive they judge the same image it's why. Wow. For all new parents thinking about how they're gonna name their, I mean, again, this probably doesn't impact them, but it's something to think about. Yeah, I mean, and you know, again, I always hate bringing in politics today. I never want to upset anybody, but it's interesting and it's relevant and it matters. I was thinking about how harder to pronounce names are judged as less trustworthy. And when Kamala Harris announced her residency, it was like, is it Kamala? Is it Kamala? Like nobody knew how to pronounce it. And you're vying for an office that is really, you need to trust the person. And I've thought a lot about like, I wonder how much of an impact that they had that when the people, they heard the name for the first time, they didn't know how to pronounce it. They were like, I can't even pronounce their name. How can I trust her to run the country? You know, it's just funny how these things in the back of our brains. Decision making. Influence, yeah, the lives that we live as a country. What should we not do? You said that there are things that we maybe do or ways in which we think on an internal landscape that would affect us negatively. So one of them actually pertains to likability. Don't use your phone. Phone's away, throw them in the garbage. If you even leave your phone out on the table and don't use it, there's evidence that it can impair the quality of your interaction. Obviously on a more sort of aggressive level, if you are just like, everybody hates that, right? Like imagine if I just took my phone out right now and started just scrolling. That would be epic. During a podcast, that would be pretty wild. But you know, if this was like a dinner conversation, I started doing that. It's so disrespectful. And people like know it, but they still do it. People tend to excuse their own behavior more because they're like, oh, I know why I'm doing this. I need to answer this email. And so it's justified. Or I'm pulling up a photo that I'm about to show you. So it's justified. But they still understand that when others do it, that it's not a great thing to do. So there's a study where they were just, they weren't even looking at likability, but for part of the study, they needed to create an unlikable character. And so they had this actress play two different conditions. And for half the participants, she was likable. She was like really friendly. She, you know, they chatted about like what they have in common, you know, all the things that sort of what we've talked about. And then for the unlikable condition, she like brought up something, some controversial topic, and then waited for the other person to voice their opinion and then voice the opposite opinion. And like had her phone go off. So she set an alarm on her phone to have it go off. And then once it went off, she continued scrolling and texting on it. And by the way, there's a term for that. It's called fubbing, pH, like snubbing, but with a phone. Oh, wow. And that was actually like a, I think an Australian like marketing agency came up with that. And now it's actually become sort of a scientific term. But yeah, it's just, it's not a good thing to do. I mean, the fact that when scientists were for an experiment, they had to create an unlikable person. And they incorporated that. That should tell you a lot about what the science shows on this. Other than that, sort of a general like lens to view social interaction and the sort of these miscalculations that we're prone to is that you're probably a lot more anxious and judgmental of yourself than is necessary. Where if someone said, hey, you know, I'll give you five bucks. If you go start a conversation on a, you know, on your train ride or your bus ride or whatever, you're probably gonna feel very nervous about that and worry that if you started this conversation, the person's gonna think you're weird, they're gonna reject you. You know, you have these sort of internal barriers. A lot of people do at least, but those are largely fake. You know, if you actually start a conversation with someone, they're very, very likely to, like it's gonna be a good conversation as long as you're not super weird about it or, you know, do something bizarre. But I mean, this is also from studies where, again, Dr. Nicholas Epley did these studies where these people on their commute were asked to talk to a stranger and they expected that over half of the time they would be rejected. Just flat out like, leave me alone. Turns out in like hundreds of experimental cases, nobody ever rejected them. Every single person on the train welcomed the conversation and not only did the people who were asked to start the conversation feel better after, the other person also felt better too. You know, socializing is like, it's this wonderful, like ripe fruit all around us that we don't really harvest and use that much, but it's everywhere. And I think we ignore it because of these false predictions about where it's gonna go, that we think it's not gonna be worthwhile, you know, we're not gonna feel better after, they're gonna reject us. We also tend to underestimate the value of things like generosity and compliments and things like that. We think that when we're staying in conversations for longer, that they're gonna just get worse and worse, which is also not true. We have all these errors. We make all these predictive errors about interaction, which again are probably just based on this anxiety. I mean, it's a high pressure sort of situation, right? You don't want to be unlikable. You don't wanna be rejected. And so it's often easier to just avoid a situation instead of risking that refusal. But most of the time, you know, again, as long as you're acting civilized, it's probably gonna be fine. And are these conscious thoughts? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of like a background noise that influences our conscious thoughts, right? It's like there's this worry ward in the back that's like, don't compliment that person. What do they think you're weird? Or, you know, all sorts of things like that. And so it sort of trickles into our consciousness for sure. But that's kind of one of the things I hope people can do is reprogram that to recognize this is a like, well-established, documented thing that a lot of people feel this way all the time, but it actually turns out to be fine. And more importantly, what lies on the other side of that anxiety is an interaction that will make you feel better. It will be beneficial for your wellbeing. You know, it will have all sorts of benefits on your health and brain health and all these organ systems in your body. Is your brain healthier? Yeah, for many reasons. I mean, one is just the mood benefit, right? A happy brain is a healthy brain, I guess. I'm hesitating because it's obviously, you know. It's not as simple, but it makes sense. Yeah, but it's a good thing, right? Like if you are upset all the time, it's not gonna be good for your brain health. If you are happy, it's gonna be a good thing, right? And when we're thinking about the biological benefits of interaction, it's sort of twofold. So one is what does interaction do for us? And then what does avoiding isolation do for us? And a lot of these studies, when you're comparing people who are, you know, more socialized, they interact a lot more, they build more social forward lifestyles. The control group is your average person, and nowadays the average person is very isolated. You know, we're spending much and much less time together. Is that just because people are working from home more or on their phone more? It's a lot of things. I mean, there's obviously COVID changed things. It changed a lot of things, right? It made remote work more acceptable and it spawned all of these new systems that replace interactions. So like think about when the first ATM was created, right? It used to be you drive up to the bank and there was a human teller. And now we have automated teller machines, ATMs. That is one less interaction, maybe, I don't know, per week. I don't know how often people go to the bank. Then we have, let's say, Instacart. You used to go to the grocery store. You see your community. You cash out of the cashier. You get some meat from the butcher, right? You have all these interactions. Now you have Instacart, someone else shops for you, drops it at your door. You don't even have to go outside. And also a COVID thing, right? Started in COVID, people realized it was super convenient. Now it's here. Working out, right? A lot of people who used to go to the gym, maybe they built home gyms during COVID or they got a Peloton bike and now they can work out without interacting with another human. There's so many examples of this. I mean, you can tour a house that you're looking to buy virtually, you can see the doctor through telemedicine, all of these things. And I think that what's happening is that we are like progressively stripping away these sort of like micro interactions from our days that we don't really pay attention to, right? If someone said, oh, what's the social highlight of your day? You wouldn't be like standing in line at the grocery store silently with people around me, right? Like that's not an interaction, but you are immersed in your community and that is important, you know? Your brain likes to have this sensation of being safe and surrounded by allies and your community can be your allies. The data are real that we are interacting less, very real. I mean, the amount of, you look at it from almost any angle, you know, how much time people spend alone, how much time people spend online, how many friends people have, you know, how lonely people feel, like all of these things are going in the wrong direction towards loneliness. And I think that given how bad for us isolation is, and again, we can go down that route, we're not taking it seriously enough. You know, like the surgeon general issued this loneliness epidemic report, we're in a loneliness epidemic. What does that mean? Being isolated is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Wow, that sounds bad, but like what does that actually mean, right? The truth is, you know, being isolated is associated with higher risk of mortality. You're just more likely to die. There's studies showing, check like 300,000 people for a decade and stratified them by how much they're interacting. Those on the low end were 50% more likely to die by any cause over the course of the 10 years. Unbelievable, right? So it matters. And to be fair, correlation doesn't mean causation. These aren't randomized control trials, and maybe they have a different type of lifestyle. Totally, yeah. But you can't totally discount the fact that they would be in more social isolation. Yeah, and I think when you look at the biological data, the explanation is there. I mean, to simplify it, I mentioned that isolation is perceived as stress, right? You when you're alone, your cortisol levels go up. If you're alone chronically and you're not getting enough interaction, you have elevated chronic levels. You're basically exerting the effects of chronic stress on your body, increased risk of dementia, increased risk of heart disease. And I think, sure, of those 300,000 people that died in that lower group, some of them were probably random car accidents, things like that. But in general, when we are exposing ourselves to chronic stress, which is associated with chronic inflammation, I can interfere with the healthy function of our brains and hearts and tissues, we're more likely to experience adverse effects, like strokes and heart attacks and things like that. And so it's really a significant factor in modern life. Do you think that AI or AI people that they can generate, that they can generate to smile and mimic? Do you think that that's gonna solve for some loneliness? Are we going to replace direct human connection with these AI robots? I sincerely hope not. I think it's possible. I think we could go that route as a species. And that kind of worries me. If you look at the data on, there are these tools, like one is replica AI and not sponsored at all. They create these avatars, right? It's an AI-powered avatar and it's basically intended to function as your friend. When researchers have asked people who use these avatars and have them as basically friends or companions or even romantic partners. We're gonna actually talk about that tomorrow on the episode, these AI sex bots kind of. I can't wait to watch that episode and hear that perspective. People who use those more, basically it becomes normalized for them. They rate that it's good for them. While those who don't use these things, generally are like, that does not seem good, right? And I'm, maybe I'm falling into that trap where I'm a person who doesn't use AI for friendship. And I think it's bad for us, but I'm also looking at it from the neuroscientist lens. So the only reason I raise that data point is because it shows that if we all sort of collectively accept these AIs as friends, we will as a society start to think it's not weird anymore. But the thing is, there's some evidence, this is very new obviously, but there's some evidence in neuroscience that the brain processes human social information distinctly. And so for instance, one of the studies I'm thinking about is in social touch. So if people came into the lab kind of like blindfolded or put in a brain scanner, they can't see their legs and they receive a massage, like a foot massage from either a human or a robot. The brain activity will be different if it's a human. And one of the things that's different is that they have greater oxytocin release, which makes sense because when you're being massaged by a human being, especially if it's someone you care about, like your romantic partner, for instance, your brain is saying, oh, look at this person doing this for me, I want to bond with them. Oxytocin is this like social love hormone. I think of it as social glue. It's really what drives social reward in the brain. So it makes us feel connected with that person. If it's a robot, there's no purpose in releasing oxytocin because there's no human on the other side of the massage to connect with. And there's no research on this that I've seen about whether that happens with AI friend bots, but I would imagine that, you know, if you are recognizing that this is not a human being, your brain is, it's going to behave differently. And one of the things about oxytocin that's really, really important, and one of the reasons why interaction is so important is that oxytocin doesn't just help us form social bonds. Oxytocin is also, it's been referred to by some researchers as nature's medicine. It has all these benefits in the body. Like it can be anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective. It's been shown to maybe support immune function, social anxiety, bone growth. It's good for you. Oxytocin is good for your body and it makes sense because, again, I'm sort of like an evolutionary biologist at heart. I tend to think about everything from an evolutionary perspective, but evolutionarily, you meet a mate, you have the potential to make a child, which is like the best thing you could possibly do evolutionarily, right? You want to propagate the species. You want to make more human beings. So you're in a position to mate, you're falling in love, you're full of oxytocin, you need to be healthy so that you can not only successfully procreate, but then also be healthy to support that young one and raise it. I think that's probably the reason why oxytocin has all these benefits is that it allows us to stay alive and not have a heart attack or whatever in the midst of being a parenting and trying to raise little ones. But I mean, you think about the fact that the human touch stimulates more oxytocin release. If we replace all human contact with AI, is it going to lead to this sort of flattening of just like human oxytocin levels that we could be getting from human contact? Whether it's 1% or 20% higher risk of dementia and Alzheimer's and heart disease and all these things, who knows? It could be a small thing, but I mean, also why would we do that, right? And you had mentioned that isolation is a risk factor for depression. I believe you also mentioned that it was a risk factor for Alzheimer's or any type of disease. Is that fair to say? Not any, but yeah, a lot. I mean, heart failure, dementia, diabetes, and then of course mood conditions, depression, anxiety, suicidality. What are your top three ways to keep a brain healthy? Do you have any thought about that in terms I bet you have? Yeah, of course I have. Yeah, I mean, they're gonna be boring. They're gonna be ones you've heard of. And I'm gonna be four, sorry. The fourth, I'm just gonna throw it out now, it's socializing, right? I think it's clear at this point. But besides that, sleep, diet, exercise, right? There's a reason that like any doctor, if you go to the doctor and you're like, doctor, what should I be doing? And they're like, sleep, diet, exercise. But is it in that order? Or is it socialization? Think about this. When you're young and you're really socializing, I don't know, maybe some people do this now, but you are in college, you're up all night hanging out, you get three hours of sleep, you're going to class and you're doing the same thing all over again. Again, maybe that's a terrible way to live. But do we know it's actually sleep, diet, exercise, social connection in that order? Or is it, could it be social connection, exercise, sleep, then diet? I'm sure that, yeah, sorry, this is like a really scientific answer. I'm sure you could like statistically model which is the most effective. Personally, I would put sleep first. I would put socializing second, I think. And then I, gosh, I hate to like put any of these at the bottom, but I think that I would go exercise, then diet maybe, or maybe, I don't know, maybe diet, I don't know. But also I'm like, yours probably is different, I would imagine. You probably put diet, exercise at the top, right? It's a lens that we see through. Would I put diet and exercise at the top? I would probably put exercise number one. And then I would put diet number two, and then I would put social connection, and then I would put sleep. Okay, and that's probably influenced, you're probably really good at working with sleep deprivation, oh, guess from that, yeah. It's not, it's not a, and there's actually genes. Certain people have genetic mutations, they can, and again, sleep for four hours or they just get less sleep, and they're fine. Yeah, I'm the opposite. Again, this is one of those things where I'm like, overly transparent, I have a sleep disorder called narcolepsy, which I'm sure you're familiar with, but for those who aren't, if you've ever seen the videos of like a wiener dog running around and then it passes out, that's what I have. Have you seen the narcoleptic sheep? Yes, yeah, yeah, they're like stiffen, right? So that's cataplexy, so narcolepsy, sorry, massive tangent, sorry. But important, so good. So yeah, narcolepsy, it's a condition characterized by random sleep onset, you fall asleep randomly. So what is the potential? I'm sorry, yes, during this podcast. Zero, so the thing is, I've actually, my case is unique in that I don't experience that symptom. I've actually never, well, in the last like 15 years, haven't fallen asleep against my will because I've learned to manage it, right? I sleep for me is like top, I get like eight hours of sleep every night. We were talking before we started recording, I have a daughter coming next week, so I'm worried about the sleep deficit, but narcolepsy is often comes with this condition called cataplexy, which is where strong emotions trigger muscle weakness or muscle relaxation. And so that's what's happening to those goats and the wiener dogs is they're really excited, right? The goats, they usually make that like bat noise and then they go down and the wiener dog, they're running, they're having the best time. I don't know why it always seems to be wiener dogs. I don't know if they have like a high risk factor for narcolepsy, but yeah, that's what I've got. I don't have cataplexy though. Your wife would be really angry if she was delivering the baby and then all of a sudden, you had this huge emotional surge and you were out. Just would not be favorable. That would not be. You would decrease your likeableness. I'm sorry, I am not trying to go off on a tangent either. And I'm certainly not making fun of anyone with narcolepsy or cataplexy. Interestingly, there seems to be, totally anecdotal, there seems to be a high representation of people with narcolepsy in science and medicine. I've noticed it's so odd, the only time I've ever met anybody with narcolepsy, they're like doing their PhD, you're going to med school, and I don't know what that is. I've never met someone. Well, so now I'm a scientist. Now you can say you agree with me on that anecdote, right? Well, considering how many scientists that I talk to on the ruler, unless they're not forthcoming, they might not be forthcoming about it. You should ask around. Alcohol, drugs, MDMA, Mali, ecstasy, do these things have a negative impact on the brain? And the reason that I'm switching gears a little bit to brain health is Alzheimer's is very, very scary. It's increasing. They call it type three diabetes of the brain. People are terrified of cognitive decline. Social isolation makes these things worse. We don't know, or I don't know if MDMA will affect Alzheimer's, but it does improve PTSD and depression. There are probably PTSD. Okay, not depression. Okay, not depression. There are probably other psychedelics that improve brain function. And then there is, there's the structured use, and then there's the unstructured use, where people are potentially partying and drinking alcohol. I'm curious as to what those effects would be if we were talking about brain health. If we're gonna end the segment talking about how do we improve brain health, and what are the negative consequences of different lifestyles? Yeah, I mean, Andrew Hooperman. What's up, Andrew? Yep, shout out to Andrew. It has really popularized this idea of alcohol is bad for the brain, right? And through sharing very real research out there that those who drink more at higher risk of dementia and cognitive decline, he knows- Sexual dysfunction, depending on the amount. Yeah, I mean, alcohol is a neurotoxin. It is bad for the brain. Brain cells do not like it. And I think the only reason why it is so popular is because it's like oil to the social brain, right? It makes every social interaction easier in general. And probably the reason for that is because it acts sort of like certain anti-anxiety medications, benzodiazepines, it can also turn down activity in the amygdala to reduce those emotional reactions. Probably also the reason why I come home from a stressful day and a lot of people have a glass of whiskey or something, have a stiff drink to take the edge off. It's acting similarly to a anxiolytic drug. I think if humanity moved away from alcohol, it would probably be better for the brain. It would almost definitely be better for the brain. I don't personally take as strong of a zero tolerance position on it. I mean, I think if it was fully illegal, I would probably be that way. But I think that the problem is we have intertwined alcohol with our social lives thoroughly. That if you think if it's Friday night and you're like, I really could use some social connection, what are your options, realistically, right? You can have a one-on-one interaction in the safety of your home, or you can go out somewhere, you can meet people somewhere. And where are they probably gonna be? At a bar, they're gonna be at a concert. They're gonna be at some sort of event where alcohol is involved. And I think that says a lot. I think it's interesting that we as a species have sort of quietly, unspokenly agreed to spend our weekends, our free time, collecting in various places with using alcohol, and which makes social interactions easier, right? We could be using that time for anything. If we were wolves, we would probably spend our Friday nights hunting because that's probably very pleasurable, right? But for us as humans, it's pleasurable together and to feel relaxed. It's, I mean, if you wanna like proof your brain against Alzheimer's disease, I mean- For sure. Alcohol is not a good thing to be doing, right? Alcohol is poison. But also, I mean, everything I said, right? Sleep, exercise, diet, I mean, there's correlations between all of these things in Alzheimer's risk, right? You wanna be getting more sleep. There are certain diets, you know, like this like Mediterranean diet, sort of ingredients like omega-3s, things like that, that higher intake is associated with lower risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. And then exercise. The great thing about exercise is there's a ton of research in not in humans yet, because we sort of can't measure whether new brain cells are born in humans. It's very difficult. But a ton of research in animals showing that exercise induces neurogenesis, literally creates the formation of new brain cells, which is obviously a good thing. And that's rare. You know, that's one of the reasons, like running cardio, things like that. Again, no clear evidence in humans yet as far as I'm aware of, but very likely that it probably induces. We're gonna have to change the stigma, dumb jock. We carry a lot of preconceived notions. For healthy brain, you would say, no, alcohol, diet, exercise, sleep, what about sex? Sex, oh, I mean, sex is great for the brain. But is sex good for the brain only if it's releasing oxytocin? Okay, so the brain signature of sex has been studied. There are studies where people have been put in brain scanners and, you know. They don't have sex in the scanner. You know, it's actually quite shocking. This is like the third or fourth thing that I'm gonna say on this podcast that I'm gonna regret immediately, but they basically get hand jobs in fMRI scanners. This is just, again, no scientific term for that one, but, and they've measured their brain activity, and it's interesting. I mean, they've shown that opioid release, so we have these endogenous opioids, right? People know morphine, things like that, but we have these same chemicals or chemicals that act on the same receptors in our brains that we can release for natural pain relief. That seems to be released. There's generally, it seems like sexual arousal, so the period leading up to orgasm is characterized by this sort of like rise in brain activity all over the place. You know, I couldn't tell you what brain area is. It's a bunch of places. And then during orgasm, the activity kind of peaks, but it sort of changes. It seems to shift to like a different set of brain areas, and then it kind of like falls back to its typical hum. But what's interesting is that oxytocin does seem to be an important player, because, and this comes from more animal studies, because in animals, and you know, rats for instance, we can actually look in their brains and look at the neurons and what they're expressing, whereas in humans we can only look at like peripheral blood markers. But what they've seen is that the activity of oxytocin producing neurons goes up in during that sexual arousal phase, and then peaks at orgasm, or at least more of these neurons are activated if orgasm was achieved. Always funny talking about this in scientific terms, right? It's great information. But the reason that matters, first off, we've already mentioned oxytocin's good for us, right? Another, by the way, good way to induce this similar sort of oxytocin rise is through massage. You could touch, if you have a romantic partner, give them a massage, massage your back. That's to be someone else, and not yourself, right? Have you ever tried to rub your own feet? It does not feel as good. Right, and again, oxytocin is social glue, right? Someone's massaging you, your brain is saying, I want to bond with this person, they're doing this thing for me. And massaging yourself, you're not going to bond with yourself, right? Or you take one of those chairs, massage your back. It doesn't work. There's no purpose, the brain's not trying to bond. It all makes sense now. And by the way, in our, I have a medical clinic, I'm still a practicing physician. We use oxytocin nasal spray. What do you use it for? Postpartum, moms, helps with milk let down. Sometimes we'll use it for a mood enhancement. We'll always try a more natural route. Yeah, there's a whole host of reasons. On that note, when I was writing the book, I learned something, I learned a lot of things. But one of the coolest things that I learned is about that, about oxytocin in moms. There's this research showing that when the baby is coming, and birth has sort of begun, right? The early stages of labor. Mothers will show oxytocin pulses. And as the baby gets closer to being coming out, the pulses get larger and they get more rapid and they last for longer. And so you might think that this is the brain preparing to meet the baby, right? Of course, it's well known oxytocin has a role in also the birthing process. But in the brain, right? So it's like, why is this happening? Well, it turns out that this oxytocin from the mother can actually flow into the baby's brain and influence the baby's brain signals. Again, this isn't animals. We don't know this in humans yet, but it's presumably the same. It lowers the activity of neurons. Why would it do that? Well, on the way out, as the baby is squeezing through this canal, it's very likely that the baby will suffer reduced oxygen, right? There'll be some sort of restriction of blood flow. And so in that time of restricted blood flow and restricted oxygen delivery to the baby's brain, if neurons are less active, they can sort of hold their breath for longer. And so these biological signals in the mother that they are completely unaware of is literally neuroprotective. The oxytocin is neuroprotective for the baby's brain as they are born. And this is like- It's incredible. It's amazing. And it's one of those things where it's like, science is so cool. You know, like we would never know this, right? Cause it's not like as, I mean, obviously I can't relate to giving birth, but when people give birth, they're not gonna be like, wow, I can feel this oxytocin, I know why. It's protecting the baby, right? Like there's no way that would be detectable, if not for these experiments. And I just think it's awesome that we are all born under the protection of these like ancient systems in our bodies. It's amazing. Truly extraordinary. Well, Dr. Ben Rain, thank you so much for coming on. I have learned a tremendous amount and you are extremely likable. I think that the audience is gonna love this and love your book. And really, again, thank you so much for your time. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been great.