Bert Martinez:
Welcome, welcome. On the show Today, we got Dr. Michael Platt. He is the director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of the Leader’s Brain. And he’s going to help people with. Today on the show, he’s going to be helping us. Whether you have a big brain or a small brain like I do, he’s going to give us some tips to maybe help us with our brain and understanding that a little bit.
Bert Martinez:
Dr. Michael Platt, welcome to the show.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Hey, thanks for having me. It’s really great to be here.
Bert Martinez:
All right, I want to ask you this right off because this has been a lifelong thing for you, it seems like. And so what was the spark or what was the, the thing that drew you into neuroscience?
Dr. Michael Platt:
It’s a great question. I mean, I actually started out in anthropology, so I was, you know, I was like, very far from what I do now. But, you know, when I look back, I think what I really want to understand was human nature. So what makes us tick? What makes some people tick differently than others? Some people tick well together, some people not. What makes us similar or different from our, you know, non human primate cousins.
And so that drew me into anthropology, the kind of the broadest lens to look at those things. But by the time I was finishing my PhD where I was looking at memory systems in two species of monkeys from South America, I realized if I really wanted to understand it, I had to understand the brain. So I had to kind of suck it up and learn a whole new field, which was difficult, and did a postdoc in neuroscience at NYU, which is like a second PhD.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And that took me down the path I’m on now in an ever nonlinear way.
Bert Martinez:
Well, you know, I was listening to one of your interviews, and one of the things that you said in this interview, you were discussing good managers versus bad managers. And it may not have been an interview, it might have been just a webinar thing that you did. And what I loved about what you said was what makes a good manager versus a bad manager is our people skills. And ultimately, you know, that is at least one of the top things that makes you a successful person, successful parent, successful sibling is that likability.
And, you know, there was a gentleman shout out to Mark Evitz. Mark Evitz was this just a wonderful individual, liked by everybody. He was a litigator, but a very likable guy. And, you know, and I had the chance of clerking with him for a little bit.
Bert Martinez:
But what was so unique about him, he would go into A case completely destroy the other side. But he did it in such a way that there was no rancor. There was no, there wasn’t this, this, this hatred or whatever. And in about three or four different cases, the opposing attorney came back like a few months later and hired him. So talk about, you know, again, people skills. I just, I just, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s the. At least one of the things to make you a success. Right?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, I mean, I, that, that’s one of the things that is deepest part of my own research, which focuses on decision making. But, but in social situations, that, that ability to connect and relate to shape, to persuade, to lead. Right. And that is, those are people skills. Those, that’s social and emotional intelligence. It doesn’t mean you’re the most domineering or the loudest. It means that you actually, you know, first and foremost pay attention to other people. And when you pay attention to them, it turns out that you can learn something about them.
Dr. Michael Platt:
You can learn what they need, what they might want, what they’re good at, what they’re not good at, what they need help with. And if you follow that thread, you know, then you can help them to, to acquire those skills, help them to find their place, help them to connect with you, with the company, with their fellow employees. And the data is very clear on this, which is that, you know, companies that do that, that create a culture of connection just do better financially. They do better. I mean, but that’s the ultimate outcome if you’re a CEO and you don’t care about the people who work for you or the, the culture. And I think you should just, you know, because they are people. But look at the bottom line. I mean, that’s, you know, you can, you can think we can get rid of management, go founder mode.
Dr. Michael Platt:
You know, we don’t need all these people kind of, you know, helping to relate to and, and get the employees to contribute. But it’s the bottom line, you know, your company’s just not going to do as well if you, if you don’t treat your workers well.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, absolutely. And interestingly enough, I think it was, I was text messaging with Mark Cuban and we were, we were talking about this exact, this, this exact same thing that, that in, at least in Shark Tank. And I think this is probably true in all investment scenarios. 80% of the reason that people invest in that company is because the, the likability and the belief that they have in that CEO. So if they don’t like you, well, they’re not going to invest. And if they don’t believe that you can do what you say you can do, they’re not going to invest.
So that again, people skills, you know, to your, to your point of it being a, you know, a financial benefit is right there. I mean something as simple as investing, yeah, you can, you can make logic on paper and everything looks good, but if they don’t, like, you don’t have the people skills, you don’t have the leadership skills, you’re not going to get the money.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And it’s amazing how quickly we can recognize that. So you know, and that, and you know, I think that reflects the fact that we are endowed with this very specialized network in our brains, a circuit that is dedicated to, to managing our moment to moment interactions with other people and our long term relationships. So it’s a key part of what it means to be human and it’s a key feature in our success. To get back to that Shark Tank example, which I really love because we ran a study actually using neuroscience to evaluate the pitches of founders on Shark Tank.
We had people wearing brainwave monitoring devices, which gives us moment to moment signals without interrupting the, you know, the pitch to say, okay, what do you think now? Or turn your applause a meter to the right or to the left, just watch the pitch. And then we had access to data on, okay, did they get a deal and how much money did they get? And we could predict whether they’re going to get a deal or not within eight seconds. So talk about putting the first impressions that like, what do you lead with, what your, you know, how charismatic are you, you know, do you light up the room? So that was number one. And then we looked at another signal that reflects kind of the conversion of the entire audience, if you will, all the investors to the same kind of train of thought which is their brain waves synchronized.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And, and it was amazing because what you see is that build up as the story is told and then it would peak right at the end with the ask and that predicted how much money they would get literally like with 90 some percent accuracy. But, but look at that point, first impressions really do matter, you know, for good and for bad.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. And is this research, research by chance available for reading or.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So it’s, it’s in the process of being published. But we did put a, a pre print out there so you can go get it. You just google it with my name and you’ll find it.
Bert Martinez:
Okay, great. I look forward to that. That, that is amazing. It kind of reminds me of a study by Dr. John Gott, where he did thousands and thousands of couples. He’s a. A marriage therapist, him and his wife. And, and, you know, he got to the point that almost the same thing because he had hooked up people to devices and he, he said he could predict within a certain level of certainty within like 90% whether this couple could make it or not based on.
Bert Martinez:
On that data. So it’s, you know, amazingly important. Let me ask you this, though, again. You’ve been studying the brain for a long time, and what has neuroscience taught you about being human?
Dr. Michael Platt:
That’s really interesting because, you know, I spend half of my, let’s say half of my day studying human brains and half of my day studying monkey brains. And, you know, monkey brains and human brains are essentially the same brain. So there’s a little monkey in all of us. I always like to say you can think of the human brain as a, as an inflated monkey brain with a language module. So most of the core processing routines and, you know, hardware and software that’s in our heads is very old. So it’s, you know, 30, 40 million years old. It operates the same in a, you know, in a rhesus monkey as it does in human. Yeah, of course, it’s tuned up a bit more in us and can do a bit more.
Dr. Michael Platt:
That’s really interesting because that, that tells us sort of underneath this layer, the superficial layer of our conscious ability to kind of talk to ourselves and relate to other people, what we think is going on in our heads, there’s this underlying operating system that is really, really ancient and that guides our behavior, our moment to moment behavior, and also constrains our behavior.
So there are limits. Our brains are not computers. Our brains are more like Swiss army knives with specific tools for specific jobs. Those are ancient tools. And you kind of can’t override them or not very easily. So learning the rules or the tools that our brains live by is really important because then you can try to optimize around them. It is the reason that story that I just told you is the reason, honestly, that we’re so miserable, I think, so much of the time, because we make mistakes.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Right? Or why did I buy that thing that I didn’t want? Or why did I buy that product just because it was advertised by so and so celebrity? Right. That shouldn’t matter at all, right?
Dr. Michael Platt:
But we’re. I don’t want to say hardwired, but it’s. But a lot of these, A lot of things are deeply baked in and, and very difficult to override.
Bert Martinez:
Now, do you think it’s baked in because of our environment, meaning our parents and our, in our siblings and our peer group? Because again, I’m looking at my grandkids and they’re these absolute perfect beings and, you know, know they forgive so easily and they really just don’t care about anything other than can we play. Right. I mean, that’s their main thing. But then I start, you know, thinking about as you get older, there’s a point whether it’s maybe at the end of elementary school or beginning of junior high when you start realizing, wow, we’re different.
Bert Martinez:
Then I think that’s when that self criticism kicks in. Your thoughts on that?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Well, there’s a lot there to unpack. So, you know, who, who we are, right. As adults reflects obviously what you got from your parents, your genetic endowment and then your experiences as you’ve grown up and the things that you like to do and don’t like to do. The things that you like to do getting strengthened and the things that you don’t like to do kind of getting, getting weaker. It is, Yeah. I mean, young kids have it made. They don’t really realize it, but, you know, it’s like evolution has endowed that period of life with the prioritization of play. And play, again, is not uniquely human.
Dr. Michael Platt:
You see play obviously in dogs and in monkeys and whatnot. And it’s a, you know, it’s, it’s obviously useful because that’s. And hone skills, but without much risk of, you know, of getting hurt and, you know, test the world and, and learn about the physics of the world and learn about the physics of other people, you know, if you will. What’s a little bit unusual is that, you know, we still play as adults, right. So that’s. Sure, we, we could all, I think, do with more play. Honestly, I think, you know, all work and no play makes everybody a dull person. And you kind of.
Dr. Michael Platt:
I know I’m getting a little off topic, but kind of when I think back to what we’ve been discussing with regard to the workplace and, and culture etc, that that kind of playfulness and having fun is, is really important for making work not just tolerable, but for you to kind of engage learning and also to engage connection with other people. So, you know, when we don’t have that levity, when we don’t have play, that makes that a lot harder.
Where does self criticism come from? I don’t know. I mean, it’s like, it’s not obviously if you’re, if you’re if you are, let’s back that back up. So we know that’s not very healthy. I mean, a little bit of, you know, awareness about right things, maybe what you did and why you did and how to correct that, that’s obviously important. But, but really dwelling on that and focusing on that like, you know, I think a lot of people do that, that just, that’s a recipe for, for, you know, no fun and low performance, honestly. So I, I advocate practicing a lot of self care and you know, and, and being kind to yourself, you know, just as much as you’d be kind to another person.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. And I’m a big, I’m a big believer that sometimes you have to love people from afar. You know, you can’t do anything about your family. But if, you know, if you’re in a situation where, you know, whatever you want to call it, it’s an abusive environment or, you know, toxic environment, they’re, they’re not, they’re not for lack of better to use your vernacular, they’re not being kind to you, they’re being overly critical of you, then it might be somebody that you need less of and, and gravitate towards people who are more supportive and, and I think it’s easy for all of us to criticize, criticize ourselves to the point where we don’t want to crawl out of bed and, and you know, like you were saying, hey, it’s, it’s good to look at something and say, oh, you know what? I, you know, I could have done this a little bit better, whatever, whatever. And, and, and try again. But I think that for the most part, yeah, I agree with you. We’re so hard on ourselves and if you were to talk to other people the way we talk to ourselves, you wouldn’t have any friends.
Dr. Michael Platt:
I think also, I mean, I, I haven’t thought about this deeply, but I wonder to what extent this also reflects, you know, the modern environment, the sort of Western educated, industrial, you know, rich democratic environment in older times or if you go visit with people who live a lifestyle that’s more similar to what humans spent most of their evolutionary career in. Essentially small group societies, not a lot of wealth inequality, people physically active, you know, out in nature, for example, you know, you don’t get a lot of sense, from all my anthropology days, you don’t get, get a major sense that people are super self critical under those conditions. You know, I think that people are generally, they’re pretty happy. They know what their role is.
Everybody has a part to play. Expectations are not very high until, you know, you’re maybe in your mid-20s or later that you’re actually wider, you know, otherwise before that and also in later age, you’re a net negative, you know, in terms of, you know, calories and energy. But that’s, but that’s just expected, right? That’s just the nature of being a human being. Whereas, you know, in, in, you know, here where we are, for example, there’s a lot of expectations.
Dr. Michael Platt:
It’s a massive society, you know, with now as hyper connected. None of these, none of these things are the conditions and you know, for which our brains are designed with abundant evidence that some people are, have a lot more than you do, which our brains are exquisitely tuned into and really hate. And so, and, and, and where to, to get what we need and, and beyond that know, it takes a lot of work. So for, for a long period of time. And, and you know, a corollary to that is that we’re doing so often as individuals, not as a, as a community. So all that is to say that’s not what our brains were designed for. And I think that’s why our brains, that is us, why we are often so miserable, because it just really doesn’t compute. It’s, it just does not compute.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, especially, especially I think when you’ve been at, you know, you’ve been trying to reach a certain goal for a while and seems like everybody else is passing you by and you’re doing the same work but you’re not getting the same results, right? Whether it’s in the gym or the office or with the kids, it’s so easy to go wait, it’s not making any sense. I’m eating the same thing, I’m doing the same workouts. But you know, it is, it is funny how our brain just, just, I guess, just does an automatic comparison sometimes.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Oh, that. You know, talk about ancient heritage in our brains. I mean, virtually all primate societies are structured strongly by status. And having higher status affords you access to more or better resources and so much so. And this is interesting because it’s a theory that is panned out, you know, going back to the 1960s. But the, now think about this. In the, in the current environment, the attention structure of primate societies is completely organized by power, by status. So everybody looks at the most dominant individual most and they feel all of that attention and gaze on them.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Boy, who does that sound like? You know, what does that sound like in our current environment? So for us it’s just, you know, the volume knob is turned up Even higher. And I think the thing that is so really pernicious and challenging right now is that because of social media, because of the Internet, we’re bombarded with this information. Right? So those, those bells are going off in our heads, you know, a thousand times a day. And, and that’s just, I think that’s just really, really hard. Like it’s, it’s, it’s hard to accept. And it’s you, you eventually see what, dozens, hundreds, I don’t know, thousands of people who are doing better than you. And.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Either that makes you feel like you’ve got to work harder or you’ve got to get more somehow draw attention or drop out.
Bert Martinez:
Right, right. Yeah, I, I. Absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. Michael Platt:
All right.
Bert Martinez:
I want to talk a little bit about your book again. It’s the Leader’s Brain. It’s available on or wherever you get your favorite books. But in, in your book, you explore what sets exceptional leaders apart from, I guess, the non exceptional. So what’s happening in the brain when someone, I guess we look up to, or someone who inspires others?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Well, there’s a lot there, there’s a lot to unpack. And in the book, I actually unpack it in, in different, like different components. Like, so there’s, you know, I think social emotional intelligence, which we’ve already talked about, is, is key, you know, and that, that kind of soft skill is often, until very recently, I think, overlooked or, or thought was less important than other skills like making good decisions. And that’s, you know, that’s a very power. Everybody has to be able to do that. But I think for a leader, you know, obviously even more important, communication, you know, you could say that’s part of social emotional intelligence, but the ability to communicate effectively and clearly and to do so in a way that, where people actually listen to you. Right. That the, and, and, and so I’m kind of listing what these things are.
Dr. Michael Platt:
But you know, we do understand where they come from in the brain. Being innovative, being creative and out of the box thinker. You know, we understand where all of these, all of these faculties live in the brain. And we know what sets, you know, one individual apart from another. Right. The kind of like the way I always describe it is, or I like to describe it is if you’re an audiophile and you know, we’re similar age, so we familiar with analog systems. They’re coming back now, but you made it, you, you may have had a, an equalizer, right, where you, you take the signal that’s coming out of your phonograph it’s amplified and you put an equalizer and it’s got these sliders or knobs for different frequencies, low tones, medium tones, high tones. So you can turn up the volume or down in any of those and certain kinds of music sound better, you know, like, you know, Black Sabbath’s gonna sound better one way with the settings one way, then Mozart.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Right. And so the brain is essentially an equalizer. Okay. So you’ve got a bunch of sliders or knobs in your brain that are for these different faculties like decision making. From being very risk averse to, you know, to, to risk seeking or from, you know, for social skills, from being, let’s just call it very introverted, very extroverted, or from being very good at getting stuff done to being very out of the box thinker and, and on and on. And each person’s sliders are set a little bit differently and kind of the optimal settings for any job. Right? We, that’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out, what are the optimal settings? And then where are you? And then how do we get your sliders into the closest alignment with, with that job? And some of those sliders are, are you easy to move? And some are very sticky and very difficult to move. So when we think about leaders, so a leader, they can be born and made, you know, so you can be born with your, your.
Dr. Michael Platt:
It just happens that your equalizer and your brain is, is set perfectly. Very unlikely. Or you have had the experiences and you’ve worked on moving some of those knobs right into positions that make you a more effective leader. So you’re more charismatic. You are, you know, are a better coach, you’re a better mentor, you make more thoughtful decisions. You, you know, you’re a bit more innovative, you know, than, than other people. So all of that can then crystallize into, you know, being an effective leader.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, I like that. You know, one of the other things that I’ve been studying a lot lately is empathy. And I wanted to get your take on this because how does empathy show up in the brain and how do we, how do the best leaders use that, that, that empathy to connect or control or instead of control, I should say, just to connect and build trust. Talk about the importance of empathy, I guess.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s a great question. So empathy emerges from this social brain network that I already described and which is, you can think of the social brain network like this. It’s sort of the, the pixelated data that’s Coming in through your senses, like your eyes is reassembled in the back of the head into images. And then that data is flowing forward in this social brain network. And as it goes forward, more sophisticated computations are performed on that data. So, oh, there’s a person there. Oh, they’re young, they’re old, familiar, unfamiliar. And then there’s one string that’s a little lower in the head, one branch that starts trying to figure out what the other person might be feeling based on, you know, facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, pupil diameter, things we’re not really even consciously aware of.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Ultimately, that will land somewhere in the front, like at the intersection of my fingers, which is where empathy lives. And we know that the more activity you have there, the likely you would be to help somebody who needs help. And then there’s another kind of cognitive branch, if you will, that is tasked with the cognitive part of empathy, like figuring out what somebody might be thinking, what they want, what they’re paying attention to, what’s important to them. And then those things come together.
What’s really interesting about this whole system is, well, first of all, the gateway to empathy is paying attention. Okay, you know, if you were looking at your phone, especially if you’re looking at your phone under the table, under the desk, there’s not a lot of empathy that’s going to flow because you’re just not paying attention. What you’re paying. When you pay attention, that gets data into the system.
Dr. Michael Platt:
The more attention you pay, the more it’s amplified. But this then raises some really interesting. A lot of things have been observed that are super interesting. That’s where neuroscience gets really powerful, because there is often a disconnect between what you say you feel and what your brain tells us. So kind of classic studies done showing bias toward other people who are not like the people that you grew up with. So if I, you know, this is one of my former postdocs did these studies where he had created videos of women whose face was being pierced with a needle. It’s a. It looks painful, right? And he could have people in the videos who were women in the videos who were Caucasian or ethnically Chinese, etc, and then he would show the videos to people and he was scanning their brains and he’d say, you know, tell me, you know, how.
Dr. Michael Platt:
How much pain you feel for that person. Empathy. And everybody said they felt exactly the same. Didn’t matter who the person was, but their brain is totally different story. So.
Bert Martinez:
Really?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah. So the brain empathy signal was like, massive for somebody who looked like you, you know, for me it would be for, you know, for a Caucasian woman. But then I would say, yeah, I feel the same way for, you know, this, this ethnically Chinese woman. And there would be very little brain empathy and, and vice versa. So this has been shown many times now and is really interesting because that is, that is, you know, that’s, that’s just this implicit or unconscious bias that we show up with if we’re not being very attention, intentional and, and paying attention. Now why is it there? Is it because people are evil? No, it has nothing to do with that. I mean, some people are evil, but the what the reason why is because our brains, like all brains on the planet, learn who we are, the tribe to which we belong, by the statistical frequency of interaction with other people. So this is made very clear.
Dr. Michael Platt:
This is in the book, a series of studies done out of a University of Chicago on rats. So rats show empathy. A rat will work to help another rat who’s trapped in a little tube, for example. He has to work and he has to press these little levers to get him out of there. But, and, and that helping behavior, which is a form of empathy depends on the same, same part of the brain is in us. So if you shut it off, rat doesn’t help anybody. But who a rat helps depends on who they grew up with. So a white rat raised with white rats will help a white rat, but not a black rat.
Bert Martinez:
Interesting.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And a white rat raised with black rats will help a black rat, but not a white rat. And if they’re raised with mixed group of black and white rats, they help everybody. So that’s super interesting because what that tells us is that, I mean, I mean, diversity is a goal in its own right, but it’s also strategy to build empathy, to build brains that are very inclusive. Right. That welcome everybody in to the conversation, if you will.
So getting back to leaders, I think what’s really interesting is that there are multiple studies demonstrating that as people ascend a hierarchy that can be self rated or based on your peers or even socioeconomic status, the higher you go, the lower your social brain network activity. So it’s kind of like the boss who shows up in the office and doesn’t talk to the, you know, the cleaning staff or the, you know, the administrative staff, right. They only talk to the other high, you know, high ranking people.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And I think that that’s a big lesson for leaders and people who want to be leaders.
Bert Martinez:
Nope, we had a little.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Whoop, slow down there. We have to be a leader who pays attention to other people. You have to be a leader who inquires with other people, right? A leader who, you know, who really does focus on, on everybody. And, you know, one way to do that is to flatten the, any kind of cues there are to, to, to hierarchy, right to status. So, you know, like, like, I don’t know if you, you’ve worked with. Sorry, there’s a helicopter going over it. So like in medicine, the length of the white coat that a doctor wears tells you their seniority. So really with the white coat all the way to the floor, they’re the one who has all the power.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And the interns have the tiny little short ones that barely, you know, go past their ear end. So that is a cue that, you know, reinforces who listens to whom. And that can lead to mistakes, right? In, you know, in treatment because maybe, you know, maybe an intern notices something, knows something new that, you know, the, the sort of, you know, the, the chief, you know, resident that does not. So there’s, and there’s a, another really interesting example of this which, which I, I saw my own two, not two eyes when I was, I was in Brazil in Sao Paulo earlier this year, and I was visiting with btg, which is Brazil’s, like, largest bank. And, and they do more than banking. They do investment and all this stuff. And what was really cool is you go, basically everybody in the, the entire, who works there is working on one floor and all their desks are together. The CEO is right in the middle of it, right? He’s got his desk just like everybody else’s desk.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And you know, you, you see that in the way the CEO shows up and the way that people relate to each other is a very, very equal environment. I thought it was super cool.
Bert Martinez:
That’s very cool. In fact, again, it reminds me of something that Mark Cuban said when he took over the Mavericks. That’s what he did. He, he put his desk right in the middle and he was dialing and calling the, the, what do you call it? The season ticket holders, like everybody else was, because he wanted everybody to see, hey, I’m, I’m invested too, right? I didn’t just buy it. I’m, I’m, I want, I want it to be successful. And then I had another friend of mine who, who did the same thing. He runs a very profitable, very big, kind of an office supply type of business. And he’s, he’s not sitting in a fancy office.
Bert Martinez:
He’s got the fancy office when he needs to have a meeting, but he’s front and center there in the bullpen, just like everybody else.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, that’s the way my lab runs too, is I’m generally out there with everybody. And often when people come into the lab, they see that I’m doing the dishes and I’m wiping down the tables and as. Partially because I’m a neat freak. But. But yeah, I mean, it’s not, it’s not beneath me by any means.
Bert Martinez:
Let me ask you this. What is your take on since. Since we’ve been talking about. And I’m kind of switching around a little bit. We talked a little bit about. About criticism and self criticism. What is your take on social media from a neuroscience perspective?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, I mean, I think the data to me is crystallizing and crystallizing along the lines of, I think, what we all feared about it. So social media is really the first very simple AI that was unleashed on the planet in an uncontrolled experiment. It’s a form of AI that gives you more of what you click on, right? What either makes you super happy or makes you super pissed off. And, you know, so it’s. It’s gamified and it just, it just is working on dopamine hits, really. So it’s just like bang, bang, bang, putting that in the hands of children, basically, in 2010, whatever, a little after that. So when iPhones came out and then people are getting on Facebook, that seems to have been a bad idea. So we do know that first of all, there’s a correlation between when.
Dr. Michael Platt:
When, you know, Facebook got introduced on this campus or that campus, and within weeks, mental health problems are, you know, going up. That, that seems to be very, very clear. There have been quasi, you know, those are sort of like quasi experiments. And we’re now seeing, I think, finally led by Jonathan Haidt. I think it’s been a very articulate advocate for now, I’m thinking about kids right now, but for at least delaying when they get access and can actually be on social media. Because it appears to be, you know, it’s like we wouldn’t. We have. We have age limits for alcohol and tobacco and they, you know, they’re kind of harnessing the same circuitry for reinforcement.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Those drugs do so directly. Social reinforcement, social kind of that. Social addiction, if you will, doesn’t operate directly on it, but it hits the same stuff, right? And we’re, as we already discussed, we are so dialed in to other people, what other people are doing and what other people are getting that it is, it’s Almost impossible to override.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Michael Platt:
It is really, really hard. And so it’s, you know, as part of our success as a species, are wiring to connect with other people. But obviously in this case, I think it’s being, you know, hijacked for, for ill rather than, than, than for good.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, absolutely. Matter of fact, what my family, what we started doing is started leaving the social media environment in, in and we have a WhatsApp family group where, you know, it doesn’t have, doesn’t have all the other junk, but we still get, we can still see what, who, who we really want to see. Because at the end of the day you might have a million followers, but only a handful of those are really important to you. Yeah, right. And I think even more, I think a lot of companies are just using it as another marketing platform. Right? Meaning they’re not posting a bunch of personal stuff, they’re using it to highlight their value. And I think that’s great in. But yeah, I think that it’s interesting that you say that, that, you know, it’s this dopamine hit and I’ve seen it.
Bert Martinez:
I, I can’t believe I did this, but one day I was scrolling till like 3 o’ clock in the morning and then when I realized how late it was, okay, man, this is ridiculous. And I just, I can’t believe I did this to myself. And to make it worse, I finally go to sleep and I’m having a dream about scrolling. All right, that’s enough of that. And so it is such a, it is such a, I don’t know, in kind of a evasive, invasive type of, of like you said, A.I. right. And, and it really, we’ve seen it do a lot of harm and I’m shocked. I, I’ll go someplace, you know, store or mall or whatever and you see these parents and their children are being given a tablet or a phone at an ex, exceptionally young age.
Bert Martinez:
In my, in my opinion, you know, four or five year olds and stuff like that and sometimes even younger. And I just feel like saying, what are you doing?
Dr. Michael Platt:
What are you doing?
Bert Martinez:
Just like you’re gonna kill your child. And I think that, that social media, kind of, to your point, we regulate tobacco and, and liquor and beer. I think we need to regulate social media. Look, I’m a capitalist. I want as little government interference as possible. But there are some things that, that we as humans cannot regulate and I think social media is one of them.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, totally agree. I, well I, I do think we’re starting to see the tide turn on this. And we’re seeing increasing numbers of schools and states and countries that are, you know, banning, for example, banning smartphones in the classroom, which I think is. It’s a great first step.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so I kind of want to come back to, you know, the other train of thought when we’re talking about leadership and things of that nature. We talked about empathy. I want to bring up trust because I’m a big believer that whether it’s, you know, no matter what you’re selling, you’re ultimately selling trust. And what does neuroscience reveal about how trust is built and. Or broken?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, well, it goes back to that social brain network that we’ve been circling around, so that that’s the foundation of trust. Trust lives within that system, that circuit. So everything we talked about for empathy is relevant here. I mean, again, I can’t emphasize this enough, and it is one of the embarrassing kind of admissions that I have, which is, I spent, you know, several decades studying the brain, and then I have to say, yeah, and what it told me is that what my grandparents taught me and my parents taught me is true. Which is, you know, you need to pay attention to the people. If you want to gain somebody’s trust, you’re not going to gain it by looking at your phone or staring out the window or not talking to them. I know it sounds simple, but so many people violate that step one. Step two is actually having meaningful give and take a conversation, for example.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Real conversation is a great way to build trust. When you’re telling your story and you’re hearing somebody else tell their story, you’re a little vulnerable. That vulnerability. Somehow our social brains detect that, and that that helps to build trust. And then ultimately there’s this biomarker of trust, a biological marker, which is the degree to which two brains synchronize their activity. So, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier, and you talked about couples and being able to predict whether their marriage was going to, you know, stay intact or fall apart. And the key marker for that is. Is synchrony.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So when you have. When you click with somebody, your best friend or your. Your spouse or whatever it might be, you know, and you finish each other’s sentences, et cetera, it’s like, literally what’s happening is your brains are synchronizing an activity. So the pattern of activity in one brain is similar to the pattern of activity and the other. And the tighter they are, the closer you are. And that’s a marker of trust, cooperation, communication, teamwork, and on and on because it can actually amplify and ripple into more than two people. So it can be multiple people. As we’ve seen when there’s, when brains begin to synchronize, it also percolates to our body.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So our hearts beats can synchronize together our breathing, our movements. And what’s cool about that is you can run it in reverse too. So moving together, it begins to synchronize physiology. So why do you think people, you know, why do you think they march together in the military when you, you know, go to boot camp? Because Building trust through synchrony Every culture on the planet has synchrony building rituals and activities. So singing, dancing, drumming, all of those rhythmic activities that you do together. Chanting, that synchronizes brain activity. And we, you know, that leads to all these good things. Trust, cooperation, it’s the glue that, that keeps us together.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And, and there are ways to dial that up. Paying attention, eye contact, having a good conversation, singing, chanting, moving together, all those things. And then there are ways of turning it down, not paying attention, not moving together and on and on and on. And what’s really powerful about this observation is that now we have a quantitative brain based metric, right? That is a, it’s a trust meter, right?
So, or you know, we can tell how much trust is there and that’s a forecast that can forecast how good your working relationship is going to be. Tells about, tells us something about, you know, how, whether you’re going to negotiate fairly and you know, and, and you know, have a good deal, right? And so that’s a, that for me and we’re using this all the time in the laboratory and now in, in, in work we do with companies because you know, now we, now it’s not a squishy concept, psychological safety or something like that. It’s like it’s a, it’s a real thing, right, that you can measure.
Bert Martinez:
You know, I, it kind of reminded me one of my favorite built in programs that most humans have is the ability to pick up on feelings or some, you know, something’s off, right? In other words, you might be talking to somebody who appears to be trustworthy, they’re dressed apart and they’re saying all the right words. But again, you’re getting that there’s something off, right?
And it’s one of those things that, that is just an inherent, I don’t know, gift or an emotion that we can pick up. Wait a minute, this guy or this person, this female is saying all the right things. But yet my trust, you know, my My BS meter is going off and my trust meter is going down the opposite direction. I just find that fascinating. And is. Does neuroscience explain that as well?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Well, so it is. Again, come back to this. This is a function of the social brain network, which is obviously there to do things like promote trust and cooperation, to learn from others, but also as a BS meter. So it’s your. When your spidey sense is going off that somebody’s not telling the truth, even though they don’t look visibly, you know, like, you know, like nervous or anything, that’s what’s going on. And there are subtle cues to that. Right. So, you know, we talked about facial expressions.
Dr. Michael Platt:
The only reason we have. Have these muscles to make facial expressions is to tell somebody else’s brain what’s going on in your brain. But some of those muscles are only movable due to pure emotion, the emotional parts of your brain. And some you can move voluntarily. Right.
Bert Martinez:
Bake it a little bit.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So that’s the difference between a good actor and a bad actor. Right. So, you know, a bad actor is faking it. You can tell because they’re not actually feeling it. You know, that’s. That’s like what I coach every people all the time on is you. You gotta actually feel it. You’ve gotta some, you know, Right.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Otherwise it looks artificial and other people will be like, there’s something wrong there. Now, trust is really interesting because again, talk about ancient biological heritage. What count, like, even in what some. What somebody looks like has an effect on whether we trust them or, you know, people who we say, oh, you have a very trust. Trustworthy face, an open face, an honest face. People tell me that all the time. They’re always asking me for directions, no matter what city I’m in, whether I’ve ever been there before. But remarkably, monkeys, for example, prefer to look at human faces that other humans have judged to be more trustworthy.
Bert Martinez:
Interesting.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So. So it’s like there’s something deep there, right, that, you know, that we don’t understand. But again, that. That I think reflects some really ancient wiring.
Bert Martinez:
That’s it. That’s interesting that it crosses species like that. All right. One of my. One of the things that I’ve kind of studied and I’ve come to this conclusion that emotion or emotional intelligence is. Is something that sometimes we overlook. Right? And in my opinion, it’s extremely important. In fact, it’s.
Bert Martinez:
It’s probably, if not the most important thing, it’s one of the most important things. And so I. I’m saying all this because in the marketing world, in the sales world, there, there’s this huge, I call it a myth that people buy on emotion, but they justify in with logic. In my hypothesis is logic doesn’t really exist. I mean, logic is another form of emotion. I mean there’s real logic in the sense that you can go one plus one equals two. And here’s some computer code that needs to be put in a logical sequence for it to operate. But bottom line is just because we know something, we know smoking is bad for us, but people smoke all the time.
Bert Martinez:
We know that drinking and driving is not a good thing, but people do that all the time. So knowing something and feeling something is two different things. And so I wanted to get your take on is emotion and logic, are they kind of the same or do you believe that logic is different than emotions? What’s your take on the whole logic, emotion thing?
Dr. Michael Platt:
We’ll change the terms a little bit. So people are probably or may be familiar with this idea of like emotional versus rational. You know, people often divide the brain up into so called system one and system two. You know, emotional one is fast and intuitive and the rational one is deliberative and slow. And it definitely feels like that’s what’s going on. But it’s not really how the brain is organized. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s one big system for making decisions. There’s no hard and fast cutoff.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And emotion is a very important part of that because that provides motivational tone, motivational coloring for. Right. Like, so you’re taking in evidence from the world and you’re comparing that with stored information. Both that from your own experience and from what your species experienced and your, you know, your ancestors before that, that’s kind of deeply baked in. And that, that kind of emotional part helps to shade those decisions so that they might be a little faster and also so that they stand a generally high likelihood of making things a little bit better for you. You know, the outcome, like you feel a little bit better and you’re less likely to feel orders. But it doesn’t always work that way. Right.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And I think that again, we’re coming back around to that. Our brains are not designed for this world part of this. So that’s, you know, where consequences can be massive and delayed and interact in complex ways with the environment. So, you know, obviously our brains didn’t evolve in a, in, in people who had access to 4,000 pound pickup trucks and you know, and, and Everclear, you know, grain alcohol.
Bert Martinez:
Hey, I want. Okay, so I Want to ask you about willpower because, again, this is one of those things that, you know, discipline is important and, and certainly willpower can be helpful, but how, how are we wired for willpower? And, and trying to reach a goal is, is that, is that. In other words, is willpower a real thing as opposed to just being disciplined and motivated? What is the, I guess, the neuroscience perspective on willpower?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Well, I, you know, I would say that couple of those words that you. Concepts you threw out are basically the same thing. So willpower, delay, gratification, discipline, you know, grit, if you will, Those, I think more or less mean the same things. And that’s what that means, is that there’s, there’s, there’s an element of slowing down, slowing down the processing and allowing these sort of delayed signals to have enough time to influence the decision. So, meaning a delayed signal about like, oh, this could affect me, you know, my credit rating 10 years from now, rather than, you know, I just want to buy that expensive gold jewelry, you know, right now or something like that, because it looks really cool, you know, Right.
Bert Martinez:
I have to have that fur covered. Sink.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah. Ex. Exactly. Now, there’s two other pieces to this that I would like to address. I mean, one is that, in fact, that part of that willpower system there is part of the brain that is implicated in decision making and also in depression and thinking outside the box. To a certain degree, that in studies that have been done on patients who are having brain surgery to figure out where a source of seizures might be and remove that.
If you apply electrical stimulation to this part of the brain, which is in the anterior cingulate cortex, this is up here, and people are awake during these surgeries so that they can report on their, their feelings and, and they can demonstrate they can still speak. When you stimulate there, people say things like, I feel like I’m climbing a mountain and nothing could stop me from getting to the top.
Dr. Michael Platt:
I mean, so they’re expressing this, like, incredible determination and will, and they really feel it. So in a sense, there’s. That seems like it’s key to the source, right, of that, that drive and determination. So that’s one thing. The second is that my. I, you know, nine, nine out of 10, nine out of 10 dentists, nine out of 10 neuroscientists will tell you that or will agree with the statement that, you know, consciousness, which is related to will and volition, the consciousness itself is an afterthought, you know, an after effect. Like it comes in after you made the decision. It comes in after you engaged in the action, it’s sort of a report back on it that it’s not, not actually efficacious.
Dr. Michael Platt:
It’s not the thing that’s doing. So the little voice is sort of more like an interpretation of what happened rather than being a driver. Still very controversial, very hard to measure, but I think I would say nine out of ten neuroscientists would endorse that, that view.
Bert Martinez:
All right, I want to talk about chemistry. I think you call it the, the chemistry of influence and, and how that affects us or, or how our brain responds when we feel seen or heard or, or validated. Talk about your, your thoughts on this.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Well, first of all, like our, our. So we had 86 billion neurons in our brains, give or take 100 trillion connections. How many neurons and how many connections goes down as you get older, unfortunately, and then dozens and dozens of chemicals which are neurotransmitters that are the signaling molecules where one neuron talks to another or to many other neurons. And some of these chemicals, like, they transmit a message that’s very brief and some linger around for a long time. So like hormones or peptide.
Hormones are signalers that last a long time. So like oxytocin, for example, and vasopressin, which are involved in social interactions, can kind of have a lasting effect. And when we talk about feeling seen or having a close psychological connection with someone, even making eye contact, that is related to the release of oxytocin, somebody patting you on the shoulder, that oxytocin makes us feel good, it reduces anxiety, and it also makes us more attentive to the other person, makes us better at reading their emotions, more cooperative, et cetera, et cetera.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And so I think that, that that’s part of that, right? And a shorter term time scale, other chemicals would be involved. So we talked about dopamine already. Dopamine is the great motivator, if you will. So, you know, you get a dopamine pulse when something turned out to be unexpectedly good, unexpectedly better than, you know, than it was before. And that’s why we go back for it says, hey, whatever, you did do that again, because it made things better, right? And oh, by the way, if they keep, keep getting better like that, then we should be optimistic.
It’s a good time to buy, you know, it’s like world is getting better, right? And the opposite is if it’s going the other way. So that happens when most of us, you know, for most people, social, you know, social reward is, is a reward, right? It drives that Dopamine system. So it’s a dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin and other chemicals will be engaged as well.
Dr. Michael Platt:
But those are going to be the key ones.
Bert Martinez:
I want to kind of touch on this a little bit. There is tons of stuff on the Internet about different foods or drinks that might help our brains. Do you subscribe to any of those things? Are there certain foods that you would eliminate, Certain foods that you would have more of?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Do you.
Bert Martinez:
Is there a supplement out there that you think is really good for our brain that we’re not consuming?
Dr. Michael Platt:
This is a great question. It’s like we, it, it’s like we’re on Mini Huberman Lab now. So it’s. Well, first of all, your brain needs calories to run, so it eats about 20% of the calories you consume. So you do need calories for your brain. That said, we need protein for our brains in particular, especially after the overnight fast when we, after waking up and you haven’t eaten anything, your brain has to assemble some of these chemicals from amino acids which are found in protein. So dopamine, you know, norepinephrine, serotonin, all these things. So there’s some really interesting studies showing that like, if you eat a high carb breakfast, then you end up in, you know, a dopamine deficit, for example, which is a prescription for low motivation, poor learning, bad decision making, and also some strained social interaction.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So I always recommend having a high protein breakfast in particular. I think that that’s critical if we get into the other realm of like, supplements. It’s very controversial. And you know, I, you know, I mean, I, I certainly use a lot of supplements, but I, you know, I don’t know that I should be endorsing them on this show.
Bert Martinez:
Well, so, you know, again, there’s just so many companies out there saying, hey, this will improve, you know, concentration, this will improve focus and, or I guess concentration, focus is the same thing. But, you know, there’s one that’s all over the Internet and social media called Magic Mine, I think, and it’s a shot. It seems to gotten some, some favorable reviews from some influencers, which, not always trustworthy, but it’s also gotten some favorable reviews from, from what seems to be legitimate people.
And so, you know, my thought is, you know, is there anything out there that actually, you know, from a neuroscience perspective, is there something that you would eliminate from a diet? You know, a lot of people say alcohol is horrible. Eliminate that caffeine. Eh, I was, there was somebody talking the other day and they were saying that nicotine in small doses is good.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Yeah, well, so there’s a lot to talk about here. I mean, and a lot of it depends on what your goals are, etc. So, yeah, nicotine in, in the right delivery form, like a patch is going to be better than a cigarette, for example. You know, it, it’s, it’s psychoactive because it, it, you know, it, it hits receptors that are for nicotine that our brain uses. And so, yeah, it sharpens focus, it improves memory, but you have to be careful. It’s, you know, it is, it is addictive. So, so again, it’s all. I was listening to Andrew Huberman yesterday and he had, he had a chemical, you know, biologist, ethno chemical biologist on, was talking about a lot of these things.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And so, yeah, right. I use caffeine. Caffeine is amazing. It’s one of the most effective performance enhancing substances for, for athletes. For athletes, you know, reduces perceived pain, it increases, you know, cardiovascular tone. It’s fantastic. You brought up alcohol.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah.
Dr. Michael Platt:
The data now shows pretty clearly that, you know, even one drink a day, you know, over a lifetime, you. Okay, your brain’s a little smaller by the time you die. Then you have to ask yourself the question, is like my goal to have the biggest brain when I die, or is it something else? Because the other thing about alcohol is, like, it actually is really useful for lubricating social interactions. And when you look at the archaeological record, there is a very close linkage between people settling down and living in one place and fermenting alcohol.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So either it was like, necessary once you start living in high densities with other people, or once you discover alcohol, you just want to sit down and have a beer with your friends. So I just want to point that out. It’s, it’s, you know, can reduce stress and you know, all, it’s all about the dose. Right, Right.
Bert Martinez:
And like you said earlier too, it’s about the goal. Right. Because, you know, if, if you’re upset, maybe your goal is to get plastered so you can not worry about it or not think about it anymore. Right. As opposed to you mentioned lubricating a social interaction. You can, you know, sip on a beer or have a, a drink that you kind of nurture all night long. Just, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Michael Platt:
It seems like you’re asking me for more supplements.
Bert Martinez:
Well, again, since you don’t feel comfortable endorsing it. Is there a food?
Dr. Michael Platt:
I mean, I like, I, you know, I’m drinking Kratom right now. I, which is from Southeast Asia. I, I mean I, I use it in its very pure leaf form the way it would be me you. Has been used for centuries and it’s called what again? Or Kom. It’s, it’s now everywhere you see it but most of where you see, you know, most of the formulations seem to be highly derived, very high dose. Not the way people, people basically chew the leaves laborers to gives them energy and focus to kind of get through the day. For me it has an added benefit because it’s antitussive. Meaning helps with like bronchitis and asthma.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So I’ve had that my whole life. I have very bad exercise induced asthma. The only thing that’s ever worked for it is this. So you know, asthma inhalers. None of those, none of the drugs have ever worked for me. So, so, you know, it has that benefit. You know, there’s, there’s just a. I think there’s a lot out there to explore.
Dr. Michael Platt:
My own perspective would be the closer you can get to nature, probably the better. Right. You know, various societies have discovered a whole variety of different compounds over the last, you know, many thousands of years that have utility in certain applications. You know, and we’re kind of now rediscovering them like psilocybin for example. I mean, you know, magic mushrooms, which from the archaeological record maybe people have been playing around with hallucinogens since, you know, for tens of thousands of years. It’s quite possible.
Bert Martinez:
Right. I think our Native Americans, right, they supposedly, they have a history of, of peyote and some other substances that they.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So now these are, you know, who’s in the gens are the, the, the darling of, you know, of treatment for depression and you know, we don’t understand everything about it, but seem to induce a, you know, a, it’s like flipping a switch in the brain that has incredibly long lasting effectiveness. Like a single dose lasting weeks or six months or sometimes even longer. That seems far better than, you know, taking a drug for life that has a lot of side effects. So point is, is I think there’s like a lot to explore. People have always explored the psychoactive compounds and it’s all, you know, it really is about kind of the dose and the context. You know, you don’t get in a car after doing any of these things.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely.
Bert Martinez:
Oh my gosh. It reminds me. And, and so when I was a much younger person, you know, my, my friends and I especially if we did really good with a final exam or whatever, we would indulge in A little lsd. And we, we had a designated driver and he would drive us around. This is in Houston, Texas. So there was, the main drag back then was Westheimer and Westheimer had all the restaurants, all the clubs and it also would have police. And so one of our, you know, so you know, if we saw a police with their lights on, we gravitated towards that because it was wonderful. It was brilliant.
Bert Martinez:
It was, it was great show. And then we also like going to, to clubs with it and, and for the same thing, all these bright lights and stuff like that. But it wasn’t something that we would do on a regular basis. It was, it was, it had some issues with it and stuff like that. But you kind of reminded me of that story. All right, let me ask you this. We’ve had kind of the, an epidemic of things like dementia and there are some indications that part of the reason that we had the slut of dementia was we eliminated fats from our diet. You know, there was that whole non fat everything.
Bert Martinez:
And so what’s your take on dementia? And, and you know, feeding the brain with obviously you mentioned protein. What about fats? What’s your take on all that?
Dr. Michael Platt:
Well, it’s very complicated. I would say that first and foremost, nutrition overall is a funny thing, right? Because what, what seems to be healthy one decade is now the least healthy thing, you know, in another decade. And yeah, there was a whole movement in the 70s and 80s to, to eliminate fats. And you know, like if you look at that old food pyramid with. And so, you know, you think the thinking changes all the time. I don’t know what’s responsible for the, the major increase in dementias. I mean, one is just the aging of society, right? So we have more old people than kind of ever before and people are living longer in general. There seems to be contributions of environmental insults, although that’s again, it’s debatable.
Dr. Michael Platt:
And yeah, I mean, I think what we eat socializing. So we know that, you know, people who are lonely, people who are disconnected are at greater risk. Social stimulation is an important way to, to head off decline. It’s really, really important physical activity. So we know people are, you know, in general are not very physically active. Physical, you know, being inactive, being overweight, being obese, you know, having cardiovascular issues. Those are all risk factors for dementia. So if, you know, if people are eating poor diets, they’re not exercising, they’re overweight, they are maybe not socializing as much.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Those are all, you know, I think that’s a perfect storm for creating conditions of cognitive decline and dementia. And all of those, all of those things also contribute to inflammation. So they unleash inflammatory processes and inflammation is really the killer here. So accelerated brain aging looks, and body aging looks like turning up the clock really fast. So you see that in our monkey, the monkey population we’ve been studying on, on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, we’ve been studying them for 18 years, are free ranging and, and you know, they just like humans, you know, they have social networks and social capital, social status and they have environmental insults.
And when, you know, when their world gets turned upside down by like a hurricane, for example, has happened in 2017, then what we see is accelerated aging in the body and in the brain. And with a genetic profile, gene expression, you know, that looks like the neurodegenerative diseases, like you know, Alzheimer’s, like multiple sclerosis, like Parkinson’s disease, etc. So, you know, I think that those, those aren’t necessarily, you know, like the, the, it’s not a, in, in many cases it is the result of just, you know, you got bad genes.
Dr. Michael Platt:
But more often than not it’s, you know, these are lifestyle impacts sort of compounded over, you know, over your entire life course. And yeah, I mean, eating poorly, not being active, not socializing, being stressed out in general just puts you at a higher risk overall.
Bert Martinez:
Sure. All right, final question. There are games out there that are marketed as a way of keeping your brain sharp. What’s your take on these things? Does it really help our brain to, I don’t know, play these games or is it just marketing?
Dr. Michael Platt:
There’s been a lot of controversy over this as well. So famously around the company and game platform Lumosity. Right. Which was pretty high profile for a while, but that was also because of the claims. The claims where you play Lumosity games, you will get smarter and you’ll make better decisions throughout everything else that you do. And my colleague Joe Cable here at Penn ran an actual randomized controlled trial of Lumosity. And what he found is what happens is you get better at Lumosity games, but it doesn’t necessarily translate, it doesn’t.
Bert Martinez:
Translate out of the game.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So, you know, I think that in terms of like, is it going to make you smarter? Not necessarily, but doing anything you can to keep cognitively fit, that could be doing the crossroad puzzle, you know, for example, or playing chess with somebody. Right. Those are all ways to keep your mind active. And so at least it won’t atrophy, if you will, the other thing is, is that there, I think there’s emerging data that indicates that, you know, playing video game, you know, like these, these massive online games where you play with a lot of other people are, are kind of good for you, right? So they actually improve mental health, reduce anxiety, speed up reaction times, things like that, right?
Bert Martinez:
It’s got, increase, it’s got to increase your reaction time.
Dr. Michael Platt:
So, but the, you know, the issue there, again, it’s like, it’s the what we talked about with drugs, it, its dose, right? So it’s like if it takes over your life and these games are built to be addictive, right? That, that’s how they. If you are a game maker, you want people playing the game as much as possible. Buying stuff inside the game as possible. That’s where it gets problematic. If it crowds out the other stuff in your life, right. Especially the things that are like, harder to do, then that’s, that’s definitely not good.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. Listen, I want to thank you so much for stopping by. It’s been a blast. And you know, again, I want to shout out the book for those individuals that are interested. It’s called the Leader’s Brain and what, what Makes Us Follow. Right. And, and you can find it on Amazon or wherever your favorite, wherever you buy your favorite books. And Dr. Michael Platt, thank you so much for stopping by.
Dr. Michael Platt:
Thank you. It’s been great.
