🎯 All Moments (21)
Click any moment to jump to that point in the video
The SSRI Side Effect: Why Antidepressants Can Blunt Pleasure
A deep dive into the 'opponency' between dopamine and serotonin, explaining the biological mechanism of why SSRIs might cause emotional blunting or anhedonia.
Using AI to Synthesize Scientific Knowledge
Andrew Huberman and Dr. Montague discuss how Large Language Models like Claude are revolutionizing research by comparing complex scientific literatures.
Parkinson's and the Brain's Value Function
Dr. Montague explains Parkinson's disease not just as a motor issue, but as a failure of the brain to assign differential value to actions, leading to an 'active freezing' state.
How Dopamine Distorts Your Perception of Time
An exploration of how dopamine levels influence the internal clocks in our cells and shift our perception of how fast or slow time is moving.
The Power of Expectations in Psychiatric Medicine
Dr. Montague explains that a massive portion of the effectiveness of psychotropic drugs is actually driven by the brain's own expectations.
Science is a Contact Sport: Dealing with 'Reviewer 2'
Dr. Montague discusses the 'Reviewer 2 syndrome' and why being at the frontier of any field requires the fortitude to handle attacks and mistakes.
The Explorer vs. Exploiter: The Bee Analogy of Focus
Dr. Montague explains the biological basis for the 'explorer' vs. 'exploiter' mindset using a fascinating study on honeybees and how it relates to human ADHD and focus modes.
The Neuroscience of Modern Dating
Huberman uses a dating analogy to explain the 'foraging' behavior of humans and how we constantly update our expectations of others based on small interactions like text messages.
The Neuroscience of Being Hangry: How Hunger Flips Your Dopamine
Dr. Montague explains how extreme hunger shifts dopamine from rewarding positive events to encoding punishment and aversive errors, essentially putting the brain in an emergency survival state.
The Dopamine Benefit of Sports: Teaching Kids How to Lose
Dr. Montague advocates for sports as a primary tool for children to learn effort-reward contingency and, more importantly, how to sustain and recover from losses.
The Future of Real-Time Neurotransmitter Tracking
A look at upcoming technology that could allow humans to measure their own dopamine and serotonin levels in real-time via nasal probes.
Why SSRIs Might Blunt Your Joy: The Serotonin-Dopamine Leak
Dr. Montague explains a surprising neurochemical mechanism where SSRIs cause serotonin to 'leak' into dopamine terminals, potentially reducing the rewarding feeling of positive experiences.
Dopamine: The Brain's Universal Currency
Dr. Montague explains why dopamine functions as a biological currency that allows the brain to assign value to dissimilar objects and experiences.
Dopamine is a Learning Signal, Not Just Pleasure
Dr. Montague debunks the common myth that dopamine equals pleasure, explaining its primary role as a learning signal used to control nervous system fluctuations based on computational algorithms.
Why Physical Distance from Your Phone Boosts Brain Power
Huberman shares a compelling research finding: simply having your phone in the same room, even if it's face down, significantly degrades cognitive performance.
The Rocking Chair Effect: Why Peace Feels Tense After Trauma
Andrew Huberman shares a story illustrating how the dopamine system must 'recalibrate' its baseline for safety after a person has spent years in a high-stress survival state.
Redefining Motivation as 'Urgency'
Huberman explains why he prefers the term 'urgency' over 'motivation,' describing it as a resilient readiness to move both the body and thoughts in a specific direction.
Breathing as a Metronome for Brain Chemistry
Groundbreaking research reveals that neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine actually cycle in sync with the physical act of inhalation and exhalation.
The Biggest Dopamine Misconception
Dr. Montague succinctly debunks the most common public myth regarding dopamine's role in the brain.
Building the ADHD Muscle: How Short-Form Video Rewires Your Brain
Huberman and Montague discuss whether rapid-fire content like TikTok and YouTube Shorts is 'training' our brains to be more distractible by strengthening foraging circuits over goal-oriented ones.
Why One Goal is Never Enough
An insightful explanation of why the human brain is wired to never be fully satisfied with a single achievement, as the drive to find the next goal is what keeps us living.