🎯 All Moments (22)
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Dopamine's True Role: Motivation, Pursuit, and Drive, Not Just Reward
This clip clarifies a common misconception about dopamine, explaining that it's fundamentally a molecule of motivation, pursuit, and drive, rather than solely a "feel-good" reward chemical. It also notes that dopamine and norepinephrine are often co-released, particularly during heightened states of arousal, including traumatic experiences.
Seasonal Hormone Fluctuations: Testosterone & Estrogen Linked to Day Length
Andrew Huberman elaborates on how our internal states, including mood, energy, and appetite, are "entrained" to external events like the Earth's rotation. He highlights that testosterone and estrogen levels in humans also vary seasonally, with higher production during longer days, and transitions to introducing the powerful circadian time cycle.
Further Reading: Your Brain is a Time Machine
Andrew Huberman provides a valuable book recommendation, 'Your Brain is a Time Machine,' for those interested in delving deeper into the neuroscience and physics of time perception.
The Ashoff Study: How Isolation Distorts Your Perception of Time
Andrew Huberman discusses the classic Ashoff study (1985), which demonstrated how people's perception of time is drastically altered in isolated environments without external time cues like clocks, windows, or sunlight. The study revealed that individuals significantly underestimated the duration of their stay, highlighting the profound impact of environmental entrainment on our subjective experience of time.
How Circadian Disruption Affects Your Perception of Time
This moment explains how disruptions to your circadian clock negatively impact your ability to perceive time accurately, especially on shorter scales, leading to problems with work performance. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining a locked-in circadian rhythm for precise time perception.
Dopamine, Norepinephrine & Serotonin: The Molecules Controlling Your Sense of Time
This clip reveals the fascinating neurochemical basis of time perception, explaining how molecules like dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin modulate neural circuits to influence whether we perceive time as 'fine-sliced' or 'batched' in larger intervals.
Your Brain's Internal Calendar: How Circannual Rhythms & Melatonin Control Your Year
Andrew Huberman explains "circannual rhythms," the internal biological clock that tracks the passage of time throughout the year. He details how light exposure impacts melatonin release, a hormone crucial for sleep and the regulation of other hormones like testosterone and estrogen, revealing a literal calendar system in your brain and body.
Why You Feel More Energy in Spring & Less in Winter: The Melatonin-Daylength Connection
Andrew Huberman explains how the varying day lengths throughout the year directly influence melatonin release in your brain and body. He reveals why people typically experience more energy in spring as days lengthen (less melatonin) and a lower mood or less energy in winter as days shorten (more melatonin), linking this to your internal state, mood, and appetite.
The Three Ways We Perceive Time: Present, Prospective, and Retrospective
This moment breaks down the three fundamental forms of human time perception: how we experience time in the present (interval timer), how we measure time moving forward (prospective timing), and how we reconstruct time from past events (retrospective time).
How Your Brain Links Time Perception to Mood, Stress & Happiness
Andrew Huberman explains the profound impact of time perception on our lives, revealing its direct link to neurochemical states that govern mood, stress, happiness, and even how we evaluate our past, present, and future. He then introduces the fundamental concept of "entrainment" as the mechanism connecting internal processes to external events.
How Dopamine and Serotonin Warp Your Perception of Time
This clip explains how the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin directly influence our perception of time. High dopamine levels cause us to overestimate time, making a minute feel shorter, while serotonin leads to underestimation. This is backed by experiments where subjects with increased dopamine perceive a minute to have passed in less than 60 seconds.
Why Novel Experiences Make Time Feel Longer (and Deepen Connections)
Explore how novel experiences impact our perception of time and relationships. Using a thought experiment about moving to a new city, Huberman illustrates how more varied experiences make us feel like we've been somewhere longer, and how shared novel experiences deepen our connections with others.
Why Traumatic Events Feel Like Slow Motion: The Brain's "Overclocking" Effect
This clip explains the phenomenon of "overclocking" during traumatic events like car accidents. It describes how extreme increases in dopamine and norepinephrine cause the brain to "fine slice" time, making events appear to unfold in ultra slow motion due to an increased neural frame rate.
Traumatic Memory: Why It's Hard to Shake and How Treatment Helps
This clip details how the brain "stamps down" traumatic memories due to the high neural frame rate experienced during "overclocking," making these memories incredibly persistent. It explains that the ultimate goal of trauma treatment is not to forget the event, but to decouple its emotional weight from the memory itself.
Your Brain's Two Stopwatches: How Dopamine Controls Time Perception
Andrew Huberman explains the 'two stopwatches' analogy for how dopamine and other neuromodulators influence our perception of time. He describes how excitement activates a 'high-resolution' dopamine stopwatch, while boredom uses a 'big time bin' stopwatch, leading to different experiences of duration.
Use Habits to Control Your Perception of Time and Boost Motivation
Learn how to leverage dopamine release through consistent habits to actively shape your perception of time. Huberman explains how structuring your day with specific routines can create 'functional units' of time, making your day feel more structured and motivated, rather than just letting time pass.
The Neurobiology of 90-Minute Focus Cycles & How to Maximize Them
This clip delves into the neurochemical basis (acetylcholine and dopamine) of the brain's 90-minute focus cycles. It clarifies that you can initiate these cycles at will, but the performance drop after 90-120 minutes is inevitable. Practical advice is given on spacing out multiple deep work sessions.
The Unescapable Power of Your Circadian Clock: Why Precise Entrainment is Crucial for Health
Andrew Huberman details the powerful 24-hour circadian rhythm, explaining its location and how it dictates periods of activity and sleep. He emphasizes how every cell in our body is entrained by the light-dark cycle and warns about the severe health consequences of disrupted circadian entrainment, including increased risks of cancer, obesity, mental health issues, and decreased performance.
Leverage 90-Minute Ultradian Cycles for Deep Work
Learn about ultradian rhythms, which are 90-minute cycles that govern our existence, including sleep and wakefulness. This moment explains how the brain can achieve deep focus for about 90 minutes before needing a break, offering a science-backed strategy for structuring work.
The Paradox of Time: Why Fun Flies By But Feels Long in Memory
Discover the fascinating, paradoxical relationship between how we perceive time in the moment during exciting or boring events, and how we remember those same events later. Learn how dopamine influences this perception, making fun experiences feel fast in the present but long in retrospect, and vice-versa for boring ones.
Optimize Your Day: Structure Tasks Based on Brain Chemistry and Circadian Rhythm
This clip offers actionable advice on structuring your day for maximum productivity by leveraging your body's natural circadian rhythms and associated neurotransmitter fluctuations. It explains that dopamine and norepinephrine are higher in the morning, making it the ideal time for difficult tasks, while serotonin rises later in the day. The importance of quality sleep in regulating these neurochemical states is also highlighted.
Simple Protocols to Optimize Your Circadian Clock: Light & Exercise
Andrew Huberman provides actionable protocols for precise circadian entrainment. He advises viewing 10-30 minutes of bright light (ideally sunlight) within an hour of waking and again in the afternoon/evening, while minimizing bright light in the evening. Additionally, he recommends engaging in physical activity at consistent times of day to further entrain your circadian clock.