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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Doctor Emily Balcetis. Doctor Balcetis is a professor of psychology at New Yor... |
Speaker B: It's my pleasure. |
Speaker A: Yeah, I've been looking forward to this for a long time, because as a vision scientist who is also very interested in real life tools and goal setting and motivation, your work lands squarely in the middle of those interests. So just to kick things off, could tell us just a little bit about the relationship ... |
Speaker B: I mean, when psychologists ask people, what are you doing to help make progress on your goals? They say all kinds of things. A couple of things always pop to the top, which is try to shock myself in encouraging ways, self pep talks, or I remind myself of how important it is to do this job, or I'll put up pos... |
Speaker A: It's great. And I always say, and here I'm strongly biased as a vision scientist, that vision is the dominant sense by which we navigate the world and survive. I love this idea of real world, real time access to vision. And I'm certainly familiar with how goal setting or post its and magnets on refrigerators... |
Speaker B: Totally. So we started thinking about, what are the goals that are most important to people, that they struggle with the most? So we asked hundreds, thousands of people what their New Year's resolutions are. We look to all the other polls that do the same kind of work. And regardless of where you look or who... |
Speaker A: I think I know that building. It's a beautiful building now that houses a lot of businesses, right? With plants on the walls. |
Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of businesses. There's a couple armories all around the boroughs here, around New York City. And the one in Brooklyn in particular is now YMCA. So it's a family YMCA. That's within a beautiful old red brick building that used to be a military establishment long, long ago. And what's reall... |
Speaker A: Yeah, those are impressive differences as a consequence of narrowing visual attention. A couple of questions about the actual practice of narrowing attention. Is there any indication of whether or not it subjects are constantly updating their visual attention? So, for instance, if, let's say the goal line is... |
Speaker B: Right. |
Speaker A: Because I think at some point that itself would be exhausting. So is there an optimal strategy or a semi optimal strategy? |
Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, those Olympic athletes that we. That we started by interviewing, they tended to be sprinters. They were more often sprinters, short distance sprinters. So when they said, like, yes, I narrow in more than, I assume, an expansive focus, that's because they're not going that far, right. They... |
Speaker A: I see. Yeah. To me, this makes total sense why it would work without going down the rabbit hole of visual neuroscience of something for another time. When we do these vergence eye movements, when we bring our eyes to a visual target, it's clear that some of the brain stem circuitry for alertness gets engaged... |
Speaker B: Yeah. So what is the length of their aperture rather than maybe the diameter or the sphere, sphere size of it? In our interviews with people, our sort of focus group studies, it seems like it's more like a circular point. And that's in fact, what we're teaching people, what we're training them to do. So rath... |
Speaker A: I think I've experienced this a little bit because we're visiting New York now to do this interview. And runners here seem more competitive. Recreational runners here seem more competitive. People walking on the street seem competitive. You're walking at near pace to somebody, they'll quickly speed up. If yo... |
Speaker B: I have so much that I can say about this, so if you'll humor me, I'll give you a couple different stories about how we can answer that. So you don't have to do a deep dive into vision science, which, of course, you are capable of doing. But what I can share with you is some, like, animal studies, where this ... |
Speaker A: I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic greens. Athletic greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podca... |
Speaker B: There's certainly vision science that's tied up in that very first stage of goal setting, like identifying what that goal is in the first place and taking those first steps. A lot of people's go to strategies that involve vision are vision boards or dream boards or post it notes, right? They're creating some... |
Speaker A: Or make a list. |
Speaker B: Or make a list. |
Speaker A: People are big on these lists. I have a lot of friends. Have you made your list? The list of things that you insist on having in the context of fitness, relationship, job, et cetera, et cetera. This seems more and more common. |
Speaker B: Yeah, totally. And the idea, like, write it down, right? They're telling you write it down or create a visual manifestation of it. And so, yeah, that's effective for identifying what you want, but it may not actually be effective for helping you to meet the goal, to get the job done. So colleagues of mine at... |
Speaker A: So much for the secret. |
Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. |
Speaker A: I guess now the secret folks will come after me with pitchforks, but try. |
Speaker B: To never say the name, right? |
Speaker A: Oh, I'm not afraid to say the name. I mean, I imagine that certain strategies might work for other people, but everything you're saying, again, is consistent with what we know about the physiology of dopamine circuits for motivation. I have a good friend, who, perhaps incidentally, perhaps not, is a cardiolo... |
Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm not saying that people who enjoy dream board creation should stop what they're doing. That's not the take home message here. |
Speaker A: Nightmare board? |
Speaker B: Oh, definitely not that. No. There's enough anxiety and fear in the world. We don't need to encourage more of it. But the process of goal setting shouldn't stop with articulating what the goal is. So at that same point that we're trying to figure out what do we want to do? What is my vision for the future in... |
Speaker A: That's a beautiful example. I'm going to springboard off that example to ask a question that has also been on my mind, which is, is there really anything special about vision? Because in the example you just gave, it was indeed vision that Michael Phelps was deprived of, and it was counting strokes. Counting... |
Speaker B: I think vision is special, and I think you do too. So for a variety of reasons, when you start, you can really nerd out on how cool the brain is and how cool vision is within the brain. And when you do, then you start to find some things that make vision unique. Right? More real estate, more neurological cor... |
Speaker A: Every time. |
Speaker B: Yeah, every time. Right. If you have to bet on it, bet on what it is that you're looking at rather than what you're seeing. And why is that? Well, I guess a couple other things too, right? Like, we can see super far. You can see like a flickering candle on our horizon if it was a totally clear sky several mi... |
Speaker A: Beautiful. |
Speaker B: It's amazing. |
Speaker A: As a vision scientist, I have to see, where is this exhibit? |
Speaker B: It's not up right now. I've seen there was a retrospective several years ago that was done in Sydney, but his work is all over the place. So Anish Kapoor, definitely worth looking up, because, like, the dress example or the horse seal line drawing, or artists like Anish Kapoor's work, that is a moment that g... |
Speaker A: Yeah, I think vision is special. Again, I'm strongly biased here. The reason I initially learned about your work was, well, now you have this amazing book, but at the time, there wasn't the book, there were just the scientific papers. And of course, upon which the book rests, and those papers are really impo... |
Speaker B: Yeah. So out of my lab, but also out of several other labs, there's been work looking at that relation between states of the body and visual experiences. They haven't necessarily tried to integrate the motivation science element to it, but they were looking to see, do visual experiences change as a function ... |
Speaker A: I thought you were going to say a double espresso. |
Speaker B: That is also a good psychological experience to give people. Yeah. So, you know, a double blind experiment where the participant doesn't really know the full extent of what they're doing or what they're experiencing, and the researcher who's interacting with them also doesn't. You know, they do this a lot in... |
Speaker A: Cause it tastes like garbage to Everybody. |
Speaker B: Tastes like garbage. |
Speaker A: Sorry, kool aid. I mean, I'm sure there are many people that love Kool aid. I guess the sales of KOol AiD will reveal the Data. |
Speaker B: Yeah. I grew up in Nebraska, actually, where KOol Aid is from. It originated in Nebraska. So I do feel like I'm betraying my roots slightly by casting some shade on Kool Aid. But that's how it worked, is that we asked them to guess what they got. We tested them afterwards, and they were wrong. So nobody is a... |
Speaker A: Is the solution the same, however? Meaning if these people are taught to adjust their visual goal line or to set a visual spotlight on an intermediate goal, can they overcome some of this, this challenge that they face simply by virtue of their skewed perception? |
Speaker B: Yes. So, in all of the studies that we have done, looking at that connection between this narrowed focus of attention and improvements in exercise, we do not find that it only works for the people who are in shape or that it backfires for people who are out of shape. It works for everybody. This is a strateg... |
Speaker A: Terrific. Earlier, I made a joke about double espresso, but now I'll make a serious statement about double espresso, which is that it contains caffeine, and caffeine as a stimulant, like all other stimulants, cause a change in our visual world. The most salient one is the one that police officers look for. P... |
Speaker B: I don't know, honestly. Yeah. |
Speaker A: I mean, energy drinks are a big thing now. |
Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, for sure they are. And if you actually are more physiologically aroused or jazzed or whatever, amped up, or you just think you are. In our studies, we have found that they work in the same way, that it can produce the same kinds of consequences. And I like that because it tells us you can actuall... |
Speaker A: I'm sorry. |
Speaker B: I love the taste, and so decaf is my jam, but I can't drink the caffeine because it didn't actually do the thing that it does for so many other people, like, make me feel more energized and more awake. I just got sweaty and jittery and I anxious and I couldn't focus. |
Speaker A: Yeah. Some people who already have a fairly high baseline level of attention and motivation, they find that it puts the autonomic seesaw too far in the sympathetic tone. |
Speaker B: Yeah. And I happen to marry the same kind of person. He also can't drink caffeine, but loves the taste of coffee. The interesting thing is that we both have to have coffee in the morning to feel like we're ready to go for the day. So it's just part of our routine or whatever, to have that taste and have that... |
Speaker A: I completely agree. The visual aperture is under our conscious control. That's an amazing feature of our visual system. We can narrow or expand. It takes a little bit of practice, I think, for people to learn how to do this without moving their head around to expand their visual aperture and how to narrow it... |
Speaker B: Totally, yeah. So just a shout out to my brother in law, who has done some of that research where it does highlight different parts of words and paragraphs, and he's found it to be an effective way for English as a second language learners to pick it up. That that is that tying that vision to the process of ... |
Speaker A: If you want to mention what he does, is there a place that people can learn more about that? We can provide links. |
Speaker B: Yeah, let me. |
Speaker A: Okay. We will provide links to those resources because I want those resources. I've been trying to learn a second language for a long time, speak Spanish pretty weekly, but I would love to get better at it. Okay, I'll approach you later. |
Speaker B: My five year old son speaks Spanish better than I do at this point, so. |
Speaker A: And clearly better than I do, too. Thank you. |
Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking that, too. You know, we started this work within the context of exercise, but, of course, that's not people's only goal that they have in life, and it isn't mine, either. You know, I have interests outside of improving my exercise game. A couple years ago, when I was writin... |
Speaker A: This is while writing a book and having just had a child. |
Speaker B: Yeah. So when you read the book, you'll see my story, and it's the real truth of it, you know? I mean, I did play that show, and it was fine. And then I've. Because I wrote about it in the book, then some other opportunities to play it publicly have come up, and it's like, all right, I told people I can play... |
Speaker A: I love it. So basically, if I understand correctly, when the intermediate goals of, say, daily practice or twice a day practice, or reading or math, etcetera, are not a visual goal line, it really does help to visualize some aspect related to that non visual goal line. In this case, the reporter app was a us... |
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's another one too, that is even more visual than that, than the reporter app, although that has visual components and is really effective if you like data and want to collect numbers on yourself or your experience, there's another one called the 1 second every day app. This is really awesom... |
Speaker A: 1 second? |
Speaker B: Yeah, 1 second. And then what the app does is we'll smash them together and give you like a chronology of what your year or your month or your last decade of life has been like, and presents it as like a streamlined video for you. So you just see these flashes of your life over however long you tell the app ... |
Speaker A: These are great recommendations and a couple of reflections. First of all, the brick wall example is a beautiful way of highlighting this other feature of the visual system, which is that the brain largely thinks in symbols. It's very efficient. It batches entire experiences into symbols. In this case, the b... |
Speaker B: Yeah, you know, we haven't explored those ideas directly. So call to all the scientists that are out there. There's a great opportunity to start looking at these tools within the mental health space. You're right. Other researchers, though, have not. This use of narrowed, like inducing a narrowed attentional... |
Speaker A: Yeah. And I think nowadays there's an increasing attention on tools that will help people orient as they start to veer towards suicidal depression or veer back into a depressive episode or anxiety episode. I mean, trying to reverse an entire syndrome or set of syndromes is far more complicated. Likewise, in ... |
Speaker B: It certainly changes what our brains are doing. So how do we define effectiveness? That's a question for philosophers. And that scientists will keep me running. Yeah, it will. When you use it towards the end of your run, just like you've picked up on. Yeah. So there's cool studies that neuroscientists, not. ... |
Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, you've given us a ton of mechanistic and conceptual and practical information. So I'm speaking for a lot of people when I say thank you for taking the time out of your schedule amidst kids and running a lab and teaching at the university. And your book, which we will point people to and prov... |
Speaker B: Thank you so much. It was a great conversation. |
Speaker A: Thank you. |
Speaker B: Thanks. |
Speaker A: Thank you for joining me today for our discussion about motivation, goal seeking, and research supported tools for achieving your goals with Doctor Emily Balcetis. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific Zero cost way to support us. In ... |
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