Where science may have a blindspot...
As a lifelong learner who has spent my entire adulthood trying to understand and fix the problems in my body and mind with science, I was thrilled to learn of your podcast. I eat up every episode as it comes out and am so grateful for the content in which I can feel confident. I was diagnosed ADHD and general anxiety disorder as a 5 year old and was an overachiever in every way growing up. Excellent grades, student athlete, worked multiple jobs and had many fulfilling friendships all without accommodations or medication. Once I graduated undergrad, my life started to fall apart and long story short- wasn't until I had my son at 32 that I realized that I am autistic. I have turned to science for all of my issues, and still believe in the power of the scientific community to improve lives. I think that an area where science is falling short, however, is in it's ability to see the value in the lived experience. I have researched all things autistic for the past several years and it's been incredibly disappointing to see the lack of awareness or understanding that medical professionals and researchers have of the internal experiences of autistic people. You have not done an episode on autism and I can only imagine why with all the messy, unclear science that has been published. My question to you is whether you could do an episode on autism where you look at the anecdotal evidence, the experiences of autistics' inner worlds, the growing number of late-diagnosed parents like myself who masked their entire lives only to have their struggles missed. There is a large autistic community that does not see autism as a disorder, but instead as a difference in brain processing. Through these neurodivergent stories, I was able to recognize and relate to the experience of having a brain that processes the world differently and the validation that came with finding the information that allowed me to understand myself was profoundly impactful. You have a major platform here that has helped so many already and I feel that the next level would be to use this platform to investigate an area where science could improve. My story of uncovering my true self is the epitome of what you seek to do with your podcast: discovering information that changed my life. Hope you will consider this perspective when creating an episode on autism. Thanks again.
factors of our sleep need
Greetings, Huberman Lab. Dr. Huberman mentioned the sleep time we need per day will change. What are the factors of these change? I am thinking about the role of age, season, daily activity (like the intensity of physical exercise and learning), food intake, and so on.
Cognitive reserve
Dr. Huberman I started listening to your podcast this past summer so I have a lot of catching up to do. Was recently reading about cognitive reserve and the protein NRN1. Have you covered this in a podcast? If not, could you or point me to some resources regarding this? Sean
Vegus Nerve
I have been searching for a good/substantial overview of what we really know overall about the vegus nerve and all of the various systems that are related to it. It has always struck me how little scientific focus it gets considering how many systems it effects. Do you have any expert researchers in this area that you recommend following and/or are there any comprehensive literature sources that you would recommend for someone that wants to learn more on the topic?