Why Neuroscientist refuses brain transplant with Dr Marcelo Bigliassi

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:00.056)
What is the human brain? The human brain, well, this is a wonderful, powerful biological machine that somehow, for some reason, became aware of itself. I think that's the best definition of the human brain, and we still don't know how that happened. Would you insert a chip if it gets to a point that they are mass available to us in your brain? No. Based on what I see, critical thinking.

Is compromised right now because of AI. But then I just asked them something simple, like what's the human brain? And that's it. The whole thing just collapsed. That's the biggest threat of AI, by the way. The biggest threat of AI is rationale building. I think social media is one of the most powerful drugs ever invented. It is a drug. If you need motivation to go to the gym, then don't go to the gym. 247 and it runs on piece of steak. Wow. And on top of that, we can work, we can talk.

Yeah. We can work on the computer, we can move around and talk and replicate that. Do we want to really transform the way we live, the way we love, the way we work so drastically?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:12.792)
This three pounds, the texture of soft tofu, is the most complex object in the known universe. It writes every thought you've ever had, every fear, every decision, every version of you. We're spending billions to build a copy of it and to plug wires into it. So maybe we should start by asking what it actually is. So stay with me. Welcome to the Human Protocol.

The podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Michael Solomon. And for the first time, I'm sitting across from my guest with a human brain between us. Dr. Marcello Bigliassi is a neuroscientist at Florida International University. Newly tenure. So congratulations. Thank you. Really happy for that. And a chief scientist at Neurosmart. He has spent his life decoding what happens inside the brain.

and body when we are under stress, pushing our limits, or trying to perform. And he does it with everything from brain imaging to AI. So while the world argues about artificial intelligence, we are going to spend an hour on the real thing, how the brain makes stress, effort, emotion, and itself, and only then ask what the machines, the ships are really changing. Today

You walk away actually understanding the organ running running your entire life and clear about what no machine can copy. Marcelo, welcome to the Human Protocol. It's pleasure to have you on. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure. Absolutely. And I'm gonna start in the most literal way possible to ask you really and try to explain to us what is the human brain? That's a good question. It's a good start. the human brain, well,

This is a wonderful, powerful biological machine that somehow, for some reason, became aware of itself. I think that's the best definition of the human brain. and we still don't know how that happened, but it's just wonderful and it it it controls all of your cognitions, as you said, all of your cognitive functions, all of your emotions, your affective states, your thoughts in real time, nonstop, and it's there to protect you, to make you better, to make you safe and to give you peace of mind.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (03:35.584)
And that's the human brain. Okay. That sounds like we cannot live without it. Right? Definitely not. And that's why it's you know, the more we we read about it and the more we learn, the more we see that there is a connection between our body and the brain. And part of your work it's really getting into those connections. I believe that it's called interoception. Correct? Yeah.

Yeah, the field is psychophysiology, so it's pretty much everything that you're feeling, that you're thinking, and how your the rest of your body reacts to that. So we're talking about peripheral physiological responses, for example, the amount of sweat on your skin, your heartbeat, your respiratory rate, and then the things that you're thinking, the emotions you're feeling. And introspective awareness is pretty much if you're you know how much you're aware of what's going on in your body.

and then we also have emotional awareness, which is are you actually aware of what you're feeling right now? Sometimes you are. You're stressed, you're feeling for example anxious and you know absolutely nothing about that. There's just this terrible feeling that you can't explain. So I think you said it and I also read it that it's not all the stress is bad. Can you explain to us why do you think that's the case? Well, I think first we need to think about all the different types of stress.

and stress also in terms of intensity, right? So w what we try to do in our lab is to leverage stress. There is a way to capitalize on stress. So for example, psychological stress can be extremely detrimental. can be, but can also be leveraged depending on how we manipulate that.

Physiological stress or physical stress caused by exercise or thermal regulation can be quite positive. And it's also important to remember that they interact with one another. They have carryover effects. For example, if you're extremely anxious, you have a presentation, you have a job interview, you have I don't know a podcast to record, and then are there things that you can do before, during and after to feel better about that? We know that for example, physical stress.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:53.346)
Caused by exercise, for example, and psychological stress have an inverse relationship, and there's a biological reason for that. For example, if you think about the position of acarine glands in your body, so these are the sweat glands. Right. If you just look at the palm of your hand, you have that's why you're when you're under a stress, you're usually you're truly sweating. Psychological stress. Psychological stress. That's the funny thing about it, because you have acarine glands all over your body, sweat glands all over your body, right? But

The origin in the brain and the target glands are completely different and they're activated by different types of stressors. So for example, if you're experiencing psychological stress, you have more sweat on the palm of your s of your hand, the sole of your feet, your armpit, and your forehead. That's me sometimes. Right. But the funny thing is if you start exercising, you have a complete different type of acronym gland getting activated. And they usually activate on your arms, legs, trunk.

Back and they tend to deactivate the psychological stress. So that's the good that's a good stress. That is usually considered good stress, yeah. Got it. The one that it's it's because we are when you're lifting weights and you're exercising. Correct. Obviously if you're exercising for like an hour or so, then your body's gonna just recruit whatever is available to

regulate the temperature. But in general there is a an inverse relationship between those two different types of stress. And for people listening to us, I mean it's sometimes we feel we we feel when we may be under stress. Sometimes we may be under stress and we don't notice. Mm-hmm. What are those things that we can do to to learn more about especially when we think we may be under stress? You can definitely that's a way to

develop your interceptive awareness and your emotional awareness. So the first thing we say is like just stop for a second. And that's part of the stress cycle. The stress cycle has four main phases. The first one is identification. Stop for a second and think about it. Is there something bothering you right now? Usually if it's stress, there is a source. And that source that's different from anxiety and depression. If there is a source, that source is usually an object, a person

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:10.742)
A situation, a memory, an environmental condition, but there is something causing the stress response. Right. If you just sit for a second and think, yeah, it was that person, it was that conversation, it was that email. You know, somebody said something to me and then I'm feeling this way right now. So there is something. So first you stop and you think about it. You identify and you give it a name. Then you can do something about it. And there are two things you can do, and these are the two next steps of the stress cycle. One is you take action.

You try to solve it. And sometimes it's impossible to solve. Like my PhD students sometimes are stressed because they have to write a dissertation. It's like, yeah, you're not gonna solve that today. It's gonna probably take four or five years. But if you write a couple pages today, you're gonna get closer. You get closer, you're working toward the resolution and you feel better about that. And the third thing, you have to exercise. There's no way around that, unfortunately. There's no way around that. And there's a

Evolutionary biological reason for that. Because 30,000 years ago, we would solve all of our problems through physical expression. And we can talk more about that. And the human brain, the structure, the overall anatomy of it didn't change at all over the last 30,000 years. We already have papers about that. Sometimes you react a certain way that's very similar to how you would react 30,000 years ago.

And so if you don't have that physical expression, it's very difficult to get rid of of stress and then the final step is you recover. And that's your meditation, that's your sauna, whatever that is that helps you recover and we call them unproductive activities. They don't make sense. You're not getting anything out of it, but you need to recover, get back to baseline and then deal with another stressor. A lot to unpack there.

What is it true, what is not true about what some people say that the bigger the brain is, the smarter that you are. Is there any is there any study, anything that that can affirm that? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. So there is no correlation between the size of the brain. No, no, no. it it depends on how we define smart or how it define intelligence. That is right. That is a good point. So

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (10:27.906)
What we usually see is we tr try to focus on the cognitive functions that allow us to execute the tasks we need to execute on a daily basis, and that is your cognitive flexibility, your emotional regulation, your stress regulation, your inhibitory control, probably one of the most important cognitive functions to develop. And they're usually associated with neural networks and how well this connections happen in real time, how

well connected the different cognitive functions are. So for example, your ability to, you know, a very simple example, your ability to say no to things that you know you have to say no to, but you're just more inclined to avoid it because it's gonna consume too much energy, like going to the gym, for example. Right? You get home, you're tired, you're like not today. Like that that that's too much. But part of you knows that you have to do it. It's gonna be better for you. You're gonna feel better after that. It's gonna be uncomfortable.

And so, you know, the connections within the the central executive network and how well it activates when you need it, I think that's a much better indicator of intelligence than anything else. Interesting. That's a good very good point. And and you know, when when we think about our the sense of self. Where does it mean, where does it you fit and lives inside this guy right here? You mean

our self awareness. Yes. We don't know. We don't know how exactly we're aware of ourselves and and that's more like a much more f phenomenological question. If you look at I think it was Hinton who mentioned that the neural networks and the way they're designed mathematically is very similar to the human brain and he's not completely wrong about that because

When you look at the statistical model of a neural network, you have the predictors, you have your target variables, and then in between you have a hidden layer, it which is a black box. You have all of those systems and variables interacting with one another in a way that's almost impossible to understand. Right. And that's that's why he said when you feed data into this model, you don't know what's gonna happen. And that's true.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:45.176)
You don't know. You create the algorithm but then how it behaves and evolves over time is just out of our hands now. Yeah. And so if you ask an AI model if they know they exist, they're gonna provide you an answer. How's that different from asking myself? Hmm. I'm not sure it's that different. Do you consider you know, there are people that say th like they talk to the brain like the brain is a machine? It's a biological machine, yeah. How do you feel about that? In times of AI? Well

A as a data scientist, I can understand all the functions. I can understand the front end and the back end engine that's running there. Right. And so are we a series of functions that work in this biological system that somehow functions perfectly based on food, which is amazing, with a very low energetic costs cost, sorry, and it runs twenty four seven.

and runs all the senses and it's kind kind of impossible to replicate. Can we design a computer for that? And I think we have companies right now trying to make our cognitions like better and faster. Yeah. But I think there's also kind of a lack of understanding about what the brain is actually doing. If you think about it, how complex that is. You know, it might you you might there there was a comparison, I think was Elon Musk and there was a comparison between

the human brain and the computer. And at some point he says, you know, you you you get a a question or an answer from a user and you compare to what the computer can do, like a very powerful AI model, and that's when we see how limited the human brain is. And I don't think there's a very good understanding of the human brain in that case. And I'm gonna explain to you why. If you just get one of your senses, you choose like whatever smell.

Okay, don't even study anything about smell, but just think about that for a second. What is what is your brain doing right now with the sense of smell? Hundreds, if not thousands, of different type different smells that you're processing right now. It's connected to your alert system. If there is a a smell of smoke around here, yeah, that needs to change your cognitive plan of action, your motor plan, that needs to influence your attentional and alert system.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:08.184)
That needs to change everything you're doing, your attention is reallocated to the source of this of the smell. And that's just smoke. And then you can go on and on. It's connected to your memories. Is that is that because is that the reason why we wake up sometimes because we hear a sound? Is that our brain telling us you need to put your attention back to this? Yeah, it's part of the alert system. It's running twenty-four seven to protect you, right? It was developed through like how many years to get to this stage.

Where it's protecting you twenty-four-seven. And then if you go back to smell and then you have like the positive effective memories, you have negative effective memories also trying to protect you. It's running twenty-four-seven. And then it's connected to the rest of your body. It's connected to your motor plan. It's connected to your vision. There's a lot going on. And that's just smells. And then you have touch, you have the your hearing, you have your vision. Do you know how complex that is? And then you have the motor plan and everything is connected, perfectly connected, running twenty-four-seven.

Can't afford any kind of mistakes. Wow. 24 7 and he runs on piece of stake. Wow. And on top of that, we can work, we can talk. Yeah. We can work on the computer. We can move around and talk. So replicate that. It's a good question though. It's a good problem that it takes a lot, I would think. From everything that you know about AI and and machine learning.

'Cause I think you know, Elon Musk and other companies they're trying to build those brain chips that and and I think there's kind of twenty or twenty one people in the world with those in setting right now. How do you see that? I think there are many different things we have to think about. there are ethical considerations. we are all scared of the data. You know, we're all scared of like sh

Are we really scared of the data in times of social media and the internet we put everything out there? I think if you access your subconscious then we get somewhere else. Yeah, I think I think there is a facade, there is a mask that we present. Yeah. some people are more transparent than others, but there's still I would say ninety five percent of our emotions and thoughts are hidden in the in another layer that we're not very willing to to get have access by others.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:32.78)
Yes, I agree. That should remain ours. Mm-hmm. But where is the limitation on it the the more you go in that path, right? To your point. do you see any benefits? Yeah, I see potential benefits. I think as a biological machine, as a human, I wouldn't like to go that path, I guess. You know, I think even in like interacting with with AI

Some things can feel a a bit scary. You know, I was turning on ChatGPT the other day and then they have like that conversation option. It feels a little bit too human. Which one? I think it was like a real time conversation option that instead of just like sending a question via, you know, text or using the mic, you can actually have a conversation real time. and AI is actually reacting and you you even have you even have like the

Kind of the physical expressions like the sign, yeah, and and things that make us humans. you know. I was like, no, no, that that that's a bit too much. Yeah, that imagine when and the more we see robots coming into into our lives and and AI trying to get closer and closer to replicating this type of experience and this type of conversation. I I also have my you know

my thoughts on that 'cause I I I think the more you push towards that the the less that we are gonna be able to continue to connect as humans. And and I would I wouldn't like to change why we want to change too much of who we are as humans, right? I don't think we are going to. If you you know if we

been working with AI and different AI models, even like Claude and like the super powerful AI models. they're still so limited when it comes to some things. You know, if you're an artist, if you're a writer, mm-hmm, like I'm talk talking about like a real professional writer, and then just ask like Claude to write you a poem or something. And the reaction is every time is the same. It's just like, really? Yes. That that's what you came up with?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:51.042)
Yes. And then the structure gets repetitive and robotic and I know they keep improving. But still, if it's creative writing, if you're like AI, I always tell this 'cause I I teach cla I don't teach too many classes 'cause my assignments mainly research, but I teach classes and I I know that it's not ninety nine percent of the students, it's one hundred percent of the students that are using AI are using some form of AI, which is absolutely acceptable, I understand.

It didn't make not even one student better. But I think part of it is because people are lazy, people are using the less effort possible to work with AI. Cause there are ways to work with AI. It's you know, you get if you are prompting and you get the first output that you get from AI, then you're gonna be in the middle of it like everyone else. 'Cause that's what they are providing to everyone else.

But the more you put efforts on it, the more it's gonna get the output that you're looking for. I think part of it as well is us humans just trying to get the easy way out. At the end of the day we're human beings, right? But but we have the foundational skills. Right. We should have the foundational skills. So yes, we have like amazing students who are doing a hundred times better because of that. We're doing things that are more comprehensive and more, you know, visually appealing and all of that.

And then you have everybody else who's just doing exactly what you're saying, you know, and and it feels it's it's just mediocre and that's fine. but it didn't really change the the shape of the normal curve, that's what I'm saying. Things remain the same in terms of the overall distribution of intelligence. And if you think like experts are gonna become less valuable, that's not it's quite the opposite.

Right. Everybody who already had that foundational knowledge is just making ten times more money now because of this. Expertise will continue to be it's value added for sure. Yeah. So it's interesting what you're telling me. So what you're seeing is that you, you know, some people should have expected AI to augment a lot of our skills, and we're seeing more people getting to a better position because of AI. So what you're seeing

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (22:12.118)
And correct me if I misunderstood where you're saying it even with the help of AI, you are not seeing that curve getting it to the much better ads percentage wise. So people remains the same? I think so. I think so. I think like I think that's the trend I see in most of the students, PhD students and postdocs and and other collaborators and industry partners that I that I work with. I think

those who learned how to work with AI and there's a lot to learn about that and they already had the foundational skills and they were experts before they're making more money. They're doing things are more comprehensive and and bigger and and and nicer documents that and you know, going way beyond the surface. Like I would do many of this like studies with machine learning six like six years ago. It would just take forever. We would get there. Right. It would just take forever and then

Even like the models, now we compare things like gradient boosting, random forests, neural networks in one study. Like we wouldn't be able to do all of that for one study. Like six years ago we'd have to, you know, choose a model that fits the curve and then just go with this. Now we can do things are way better. but we know exactly what we're asking for. Mm-hmm. We know the output and we can reveal it. You know what you want. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That won't change it. You have to know what you want.

And that's part of the whole challenge and the whole problem. Is it's it's at the end of the day adoption and the adoption of the tool it depends on what people are using it for. If you want to use it to augment and get better and better, you're probably gonna get better and better. You know, some people are saying it's in the future AI and robotics are gonna do a lot of what we do today, a lot of the tasks. We're gonna have more free time. I'm not seeing that happening today. The more you work with AI, if you're

Really using it. It's just more work. It's just more work in one person in one human brain. So are you concerned about that? No. Do you feel that the the load on the brain and our body if we don't take actions should get us into a stressful situation because of that? I I think it's changing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:29.836)
You know, people are concerned about like this cognitive functions and some of them are gonna get completely or at least partially compromised because of AI. And and I think they're changing. I think some of them are indeed being partially compromised. and I see that with the PhD degree is at risk right now, based on what I see. Critical thinking is compromised right now because of AI. So I remember I would spend

I did my PhD in the UK. my former PhD supervisor was Costas Carrot Georges. We would go to Starbucks, nine AM, and stay until ten PM for four years, and spend like hours, if not days, on a paragraph. And it was not only the words, it was the discussion. Yeah. Days on a paragraph. And it and it fell s you know, it might feel stupid right now, but it was not.

Because there was a lot of critical thinking behind a lot of discussion. That was the development of the philosophical thinking. And that's the PhD. Now I get the students and they're gonna write more papers, they're gonna have better graphs, they're gonna have a better code base, but then I just ask them something simple, like what's the human brain? And that's it. That's it. The whole thing just collapses. We need to send them this we need to send them this conversation.

So some of some things are gonna be compromised based on what I see. but some other cognitive functions and and tasks are going to improve as a consequence. So we just have to be open to the possibility that things are changing and then just try to, you know, make the most of it. Is it true that the the more you train the brain or the more you exercise the brain, the the the better for us? is there anything that for example

Languages. Right. What I've heard is if you don't practice you forget. Is this because this is based on exercising and and repeating tasks that that's how the brain uses to really make sure that y you keep that knowledge and that functioning? Yeah, your brain has like a priority list, right? So and that's why it functions so perfectly because it's based on the the effect size.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:49.748)
of whatever it is that you're doing. So what's the what has the most pronounced effect on your survival right now? And then I'll I'll make sure that I focus on that and I will partially or completely ignore everything else and that is also something to do with your complex behaviors. Right? The same thing with the rest of your body. If you think about your muscles, you're exercising, you stop exercising for a week, you will start or if you're like doing weightlifting every day then you switch to running, your body will start adapting immediately.

immediately. even when we we do studies looking at neuroplasticity from the using brain connectivity analysis where we get people to just execute a complex motor skill could be like a handstand for example but they don't know how to do that they never they've never done that but they try to do it and they fail and that's fine and then they practice for one day they're not gonna be able to do that anyway that's fine but then within that day

before and after practice, you measure brain connectivity and you can already see that the connections and the activity, so these are two different variables, are changing. So you see the brain trying to adapt almost in real time, within hours. Now you don't see the physical change, the movement's the same. It looks like the brain reacting to the extra it's already adapting. It's already adapting. So when you go to the gym and you just like feel b worse than before

you're not lifting the same amount of weights or whatever that is, you're not running faster. It doesn't matter. Your body's already adapting. You just don't see the changes, right? So the brain does exactly that and the same in that context. so for with languages is the same thing. It will you will adapt to the to the needs that are imposed by by the physical and psychological stress. That's why when you stop going to the gym like I stopped months ago I need to get back to it's so hard to get back to Right. Yeah.

So so that has to do but but you create reference points. So that's one important thing. So stress, physical stress is really important because it creates reference points. So you might tell yourself, like I've done this before, I know my body can handle it. So it's just a matter of time until I get back to it and just need to make sure I design the program in such a way that I don't hurt myself, right? until I get there. I don't know how long it's gonna take to get to that point.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (29:11.554)
But there is a way to get there because I've done this before. I dealt with the emotions, I dealt with the pain, I dealt with the discomfort, and and so I know it's possible. And so you keep pushing, you know, the boundaries until you get there. Interesting. That sup explains a lot on how the brain function and the priority is a clear example of how it works. Mm-hmm. And the thing sometimes we don't notice, like there is progress, right? Some people start working out or

Like you say, trying to do that type of exercise and they think there's no progress. But behind the scenes the brain is you know, trying to adapt to the to to that. Interesting. Marcelo, emotions, and and gut feelings. People say, I have this gut feeling. I'm feeling this. How much of that is actually the brain interpreting what the body is saying? Is there anything around that?

Yeah, definitely. so the gut feelings are usually emotions that you're not completely aware of or affective states that you're not completely aware of. so that's when we ha we need to think about the connection between interceptive awareness and emotional awareness. so there is definitely something happening. Now you have memories from you know, if you're let's say thirty-five years old, you have memories from the age of four that you're not completely aware of. But your brain

is storing that somewhere. If that was there is a paper in psychology a classic paper says the title is bad is stronger than good. Hmm. There's a reason for that, right? 'Cause it's protecting you, the brain's protecting you. So if bad is stronger than good, why? Because everything that has a negative connotation, like a negative effective state, a negative memory, a negative emotion that was sufficiently powerful to influence your memory system.

Then you will remember that and you react to that. And that will that will be there to protect you. Because if that happens again thirty-five years from now, you need to remember it. Right? And so are you aware of that? Maybe not. It doesn't enter focal awareness. You're not conscious of it, but your body's reacting, trying to get you to respond accordingly so you can protect yourself.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:35.726)
So that's not necessarily, you know, that that feeling doesn't exist. You might not just be aware of its source from where it's coming. but that doesn't mean that you should completely ignore it. So it is there somewhere. Is that kind of the explanation of why some people they're so attached to memories or bad memories than others? Some people they they don't forget bad experiences, right? Mm-hmm. Others they it's not that they forget, they forgive and they move on.

But they don't live with that every day. Mm-hmm. Is are those linked? Yeah, I think we're kind of entering the field of trauma in that regard. and it is still a protective mechanism. You know, there's a a theory in psychology of the kid that lives inside you. You know, we all have or you know, I have a little boy that's like maybe four or five years old, that's my version that's still living in my brain, and it's there to protect me.

protecting of like things that could hurt me that used to be extremely bad when I was a kid. Right. So you know, the field of trauma is it's very complex because it's it's very connected to your subconscious, and that might actually prevent you from like taking actions and living your life meaningfully and experiencing peace of mind and joy. and so we we also have that in many of our projects now, which is

You know, what's the percentage of the population that doesn't actually need therapy? That's a that's a very complex question. Because the truth of the matter is probably ninety-nine point ninety nine percent. Who doesn't need help? That type of it's too much. Life is a little bit too much sometimes. You know, y you really think that you're self sufficient in that regard. Now it doesn't mean that you're not functional.

Can be 100% functional, that's absolutely fine. If you're zombified, that's a different question, but you can be completely functional. You can take care of your family, you can travel, you can make money, you can live a meaningful life for a hundred years, that's a different question. But does that mean that you could experience more peace of mind if you had professional help? That that's another question. So if you think carefully about that, and that has to do with with the the the

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:01.826)
topic of metacognition. And so metacognition is your ability to think about your thinking. And so also under explain that to me. Think about my thinking. It's actually taking the time right now to think about my thoughts. Yeah. So it's more than that. So we have to understand that me, I'm not a gold standard of thinking. And you're not either. Right. So you're gonna think things that

make perfect sense in your head. You can justify. That's the biggest threat of AI by the way. The biggest threat of AI is rationale building. Rationale building is your ability to justify something. Now you can say, for example, what's the correlation between having a mustache and intelligence? Correlation is zero. It doesn't exist, okay? But you can go to Claude or ChatGPT or whatever

And you want you can say I want 1000 pages connecting, having a mustache with intelligence. And I want visual diagrams. And I want a very comprehensive scientific literature supporting all of that. And you get all of that. And you will make perfect sense and you have the scientific support for that. Going with testosterone and and social representation and blah blah. It doesn't exist. But you can get that. It's called rational building.

So if you don't take a step back and you think critically about the rationale, then you just fall in a rabbit hole that's not gonna take you anywhere, right? And so thinking about your thinking is the development of metacognition. How do you do that? Well stop for a second and think. And be more critical about yourself. Does this emotion make sense? Is there any way I can It's hard though. It is it's the hardest job. It's hard. It is. The most complex thing in on the planet. Because we I mean

speaking for myself and from people that I relate to, we usually we re usually respond based on our emotions, on how we're feeling. In your experience. And exactly. So where you're saying, yes, sh probably what we all should be doing, take a step back before we even say or do something, right? To really be intentional about it and see if it makes sense according to, you know,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:26.648)
to what we think about life or what we're doing, but that would be the perfect word and there would be there wouldn't be any mistakes made if we all do that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you you just stop for a second and and you can get any kind of like practical example. You know, I saw a person and then I had this thought. And then just stop it. Was it a good thought? Why did you think that? From where is it coming? Was it something that your mother told you when you're ten years old?

that now it became part of your like core memories and influence your personality and maybe shouldn't be there. Can you rethink, can you reinstall a new memory that makes more sense? Why you know and then you can think about like other, you know, there are many ramifications to that. We like racism and thinking that you're better than everybody else, thinking that you're a certain way, thinking that your race is better and blah blah. Think about that for a second. Think.

From where is it coming? It's not probably not coming from you. Does that actually make sense? And if you if you live with somebody who had like, you know, world experiences and and you know and is humble enough to to criticize and critique your own thoughts, then you become a better person. I think that's the the the purpose of life, to help others and become a better person. And the only way to do is that if you stop for a second and you think about the way you think. And

And and for that you need to give yourself a room and a space for that, right? You need to allow yourself to get there. Mm-hmm. And I think also people sometimes they don't want to go to places that they know that they're not gonna like what there is there. Mm-hmm. One hundred percent. Yeah. This is it's a very difficult process for that specific reason because it's gonna hurt emotionally and socially and it's gonna be a very painful experience, but that's where

you know the truth is and you have to face your demons and and that's why the therapy matters. That's why putting yourself in situations that are uncomfortable matters. and and I think if the if the main purpose is to become a better man, it's to become a better person, to become a better woman and to help others in your community, there's only one way to get there. You know, it's and and

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:48.086)
I always say like going to the gym is important. Like we have PhD students who are like they're stressed and they're like, Okay, I know the exercise goods, I'm gonna go to the gym. It's like, yeah, but you still have to do the other part of the job, which is to stop and think and read and take your time, and do your therapy and whatever that is that helps you develop that critical thinking, develop that philosophical thinking. without that you're truly not like a a PhD.

'Cause that's the philosophical thinking and that should not only apply to scientific study, it applies to everything. To w yeah, every part of life. And and you know, so that's the part that AI is not helping with. And it's also scares me a lot because the more you use AI, the more AI want to please you. Okay, we know that. It's AI and these models, they are trying to find ways to get you what you think you need.

But without really telling you what you don't want to hear. Mm-hmm. Because they don't know a lot about you. Mm-hmm. So no one can replace that type of work other than you doing it with yourself and with the help of human beings that are professional. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah, when you when you th you know, there's you know, I work with wearables portable devices like portable EEG and FNIERs and HRV and

all the brains that you can possibly think and the work we do with Neurosmart as well, you know, looking at GSR, galvanic skin response and etcetera. But nothing replaces introspective awareness and emotional awareness, right? And so I have to all the data that's provided by wearables and this new, you know, electronic gadgets, it it's important. And and that's very similar to what AI does, but you know

It can tell you like you didn't really sleep very well last night. But you know that already, don't you? When you say you you know that already, it's because what do you mean when we wake up we feel like we didn't have a good night of sleep? Right, if I ask you like how'd you sleep last night? I have this guy right here. So I tell me how how you slept last night. last night I didn't sleep my best. I woke up

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:12.308)
an hour earlier than I usually sleep for. That's what I can tell you. Do you feel fully recovered? I did I do. That's your that's your gold standard of sleep quality. Usually I don't I don't need the eight hours as people say you need eight hours every day. Usually with six hours I'm right so let's say that that's a ten out of ten and you slept perfectly and you're fully recovered and then you look at your sleep score and sixty percent. Mm-hmm

How does that make you feel? It's you know, in my case, I know how I feel. I use the technology as something to give me signals that I may be not paying attention to, but not something that I need to rely on one hundred percent. So if this guy tell me, Hey, you are sixty percent last night's okay, I maybe because I slept an hour less, he doesn't know everything about me, I take it with a grain of salt.

Okay. That's me. Yeah. Okay. That's not most of the users perhaps, where that could have a negative emotional effect. Yes. That could influence negative thoughts. Yes. And that could be completely inaccurate. Yes, exactly. That could be because I work with the data. I work with all the HRV measures and all the GSR measures and all the EEG stuff. And I see all the artifacts and the bad segments and the mechanical artifacts and the elec electrical artifacts.

And I see there's a lot of feature in I d I do the feature engineering behind behind that. And there are a lot of source data reconstruction to get to the score that you see. And so we'll never be as good as asking like how'd you sleep last night? And so do we need that? And the answer is, well, i there is value in it. but nothing will replace your interpretation of your life, although you still have to develop that metacognition and think about

Maybe I'm just saying it's left perfectly because of s a social effect or whatever that is. But if you're if you're truly honest about that and then you know. I still I still think there is positive coming from this wearable to give you those that information that you may feel it about you but you don't know. I know that it's not perfect. This is technology, this is hardware and software. Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:37.112)
Trying to get the best signs they can from your body. So, you know, there's a lot as you work on it, you've probably seen it all, or a lot of how this is made. But still, it's for a lot of people that are they're not self aware of how they feel or how the body is feeling, for example, this may give them some data to look at it. Not over relying with it, but at least to help them understand a little bit better.

what are the things and how things are going. Correct. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. and then it might be the case that your level of interceptive and emotional emotional awareness are so low that you actually that that can help and you know you can bring that to the fore and then at least you can take action based on that. and that's the case for for a lot of users for sure. It's like recent for example, Chat GPT came something on the app now that is called health.

Mm-hmm. Where you can actually hook up where ne wherever your health data lives, mm-hmm, all your exams, mm-hmm, and gives you a summary out of that. I know it's not perfect. I work with technology.

But there's a lot of millions of people out there, they they are over reliant on what they're getting from this piece. And you know, part of my concern is where are we gonna get if you are trusting maybe AI as your doctor and you're not seeking professional help because of what AI may be telling about yourself. But at the same time, we have been using Google forever. Yeah. Right?

And what happens is for years people went to Google, Google something that they have, or they were feeling and getting or trying to understand from the many articles that Google provides what may be the answer to what they were looking for. The thing is with AI and these LLMs now, they are giving you the answer. An answer. At least an answer. It may not be correct, but at least they're giving you right away. So it makes it

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:01.928)
easier for people to just skip the fundamental on trying to find professional help. Because they're getting the answer right there. And that for me it's it's it's a concern that I have. especially in that aspect of people not looking for professional medical advice, for example, from professionals in a way. Yeah, I think I again I think there is value, as you mentioned.

But you have lit you definitely need to take that with a pinch of salt. You know, it's it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole and you know you you find one little thing, you have three hundred and fifty biomarkers and then one is red and you're like you go down the rabbit hole. I have cancer. And then you can easily again because of the rationale building, you can easily connect anything to anything. So you can go from like low protein to cancer within a couple prompts.

And you're just guiding t the AI and you're gonna get there if you want. If you if you want to get there, there will be a rationale to justify that connection. Does that connection exist? Probably not, but but you can you keep pushing that way. That's scary. That is, yeah. Because then you start to believe in that, then you have an anxiety effect, right? Now you're stressed for something that doesn't exist until you consult with the doctor and you're like, N nothing's happening. 'Cause there are connection to everything then.

There is a connection to everything. That's the rationale building, that that's the biggest risk. That's why you need to always stop. So the critical thinking again became a million times more important now because of AI. Absolutely. Marcelo, we we live in a very fast paced environment, right? Especially work today may feel a lot for a lot of people. Leaders, you know, trying to make sense how they're gonna implement and leverage AI, for example.

There's a lot of stress that people are living with nowadays. But I also think sometimes we as humans we don't take action until maybe it is too late, or we don't feel it until maybe it is too late. And how can we avoid getting to that point? To the point where we're not adopting AI or No, to the point that it is too much stress for us to handle.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:26.178)
Yeah, I think it has also something to do with the stress paradigm, right? Like you stress so much about something good, then that becomes something bad. Yes, that's what I was trying to get to. Yeah. I think we we do a lot of the a lot of research on like the stress paradigm of like behavioral health, or like people try to be healthy one hundred percent of the time with absolutely everything.

Mm-hmm. So everything that you eat, the way you think, the way you dress, the where you go, your social rel and and then it becomes a major stressor that compromises your life. That is exactly what I wanted to ask you. So so so yeah, so it's balance, right? There must be balance, right? We always say that. so you're gonna try yeah, and and that goes I was I I'm an advisor for a company called Menly, M-N-L-Y.

and that's one of the things we're discussing the other day in the Scientific Council, is you know, we have to be very careful with all the recommendations we give people in terms of supplements, blood tests, interventions, meditation, exercise protocols and all of that because people have a life, you know. So if you're a a professional athlete, maybe that's your job and that's understandable, but

But that's not the case for everybody else. So what what is recommended is exactly what the brain does. What's your priority? What are the three things that you can do to make your life better, right? And that might be, for example, you know, I have my family, I have my job, and I have my exercise, and everything else will not be perfect.

professional athlete maybe you work out six to eight hours a day. And that's your routine and that's your life. But for us people, regular human beings, glued to the screen on social media and seeing these perfect bodies and we want to get there, that's all our brain is seeing every day. It is. Mm-hmm. Right? So it's what do we do about it? Yeah I think

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:35.446)
You know, I always we we have one lecture about social media in one of my psychology classes and we always say like I think social media is one of the most powerful drugs ever invented. It is a drug Right, it doesn't have the same pathway, I understand, but some of the mechanisms are exactly the same and it can reach like billions of people, and and influence their behaviors and the way they think. So this is extremely dangerous. We all know that. you know this kind of unrealistic

Realistic situations that we see, and then we're always like comparing ourselves against that. we always say, you know, we try to create reference points for ourselves based on our self-efficacy and our physical capacity. So if we're getting like somebody who is sedentary and or obese and they want to start exercising, the worst thing that they can do is start comparing themselves with everything else that's on social media. But if they if they

Push themselves as hard as possible within the limits of self-efficacy, so you're not failing all the time and there and therefore feeling yourself as a failure, thinking of yourself as a failure, and then within the limits of physical capacity, that means that you're not pushing yourself to the point where you hurt yourself all the time, then you're making progress, right? So but it's very difficult for someone who has not developed their brain completely, like a 16-year-old, right? So we already know that the the brain.

Reaches its like what we call like full capacity around the age of 26 for most people. And he obviously can continues to develop, but it's definitely not fully developed until that, you know, that age for the vast majority of the population. And so influencing them with this, you know, examples from social media, and we understand that 100% of what's in there is just staged.

So likelihood is you're like a hundred percent. Okay. I'm glad you said we at the very least have futures. We at the very least have preparation for that. It was already one hundred percent and now AI arrived and people are following these AI profiles thinking that they are regular human beings because AI is getting so good about video right now that they look like a regular human beings. And sometimes I is you know, they pop up on my feet and I go there. And these are

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:57.718)
People, regular human beings thinking that this is a real They're real people, yeah. Just gets worse. It's like the perception you know, and I don't know what we can do, how we can train our brain for that. It's almost impossible because this is what our eyes and the w it's it's our senses, right? It's our senses reacting to what we're seeing and if it looks so real, there's I mean, we're not gonna be able to train this guy to

That that's that's the one thing, not only about social media, but about, you know, all kinds of entertainment as well. you are aware of that. If I ask you, or if you even ask a teenager, are you aware of the fact that this was staged? That this doesn't exist, that this person used filters and editing and all of that and they're gonna say, Yes, a hundred percent but you still feel it. Your body's reacting the same way.

Your emotions are changing the same way. Your affective states are changing. Your memories are getting influenced the same way. So you're aware of that, but your body's still reacting because you might not have that powerful filter that can protect you against all the sensory influences on the planet, right? And so, how do you protect yourself? Well, you have you might have to take some time after that to think about it, or you try to avoid it as much as you can, but there will be an influence. That's why they're called influence.

Influencers, right? Because regardless of the fact that you're aware of their existence and how they function, you still react to it. Oof, a lot to unpack. A lot to unpack. Would you insert a chip if it gets to a point that they are mass available to us in your brain? No. You would never do that? No. For any for any reason, any situation.

No, I'm living a beautiful, meaningful, wonderful life. I have my hobbies, I have a job that I love, I have a wonderful family. a perfect day is a day that I go to the gym and then I go to sauna, I spend time with my kids, I spend time with my wife, I go to the jacuzzi if I can, I work a lot on the data, I work with my students, at the end of the day I smoke a cigar and I do that every single day. So I'm living in paradise.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (55:25.774)
My my grandmother, my late great grandmother, she used to she used to smoke a Cuban cigar every single day. And she died of ninety-six years old. That's usually the case. She lived ninety six years old with her brain working perfectly and she used to smoke

every single day. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Heard too many stories like that. So you have your data there. I have my data there, yeah. And people say, you know, like, you know, let's travel and I you know, I'll I'll travel and I'll do whatever and I'll create this core memories for my kids and I'll go to conference and all of that. But this is for me it's it's paradise so don't wanna change anything. Like this is good. It's good. I'm I'm obviously working and trying to make more money and trying to do this and the

That's fine. But very try to be very happy with your situation, grateful for everything you have. I think that's that's the magic of it. Absolutely. That's why also sometime I ask why we want to get there. I understand.

AI is advancing, robotics, etc. But why do we want to change our lives so much? Sometimes I ask that to myself. We have the best technologies in the world right now. A lot that is happening to improve our the quality of lives in the medical fields, but sometimes I feel like

where some people want to take us is a future of what we've seen in the movies. Mm-hmm. And why do we want to change so much our lives? We have our jobs

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (57:08.182)
We need to work. It's do we want to really transform the way we live, the way we love, the way we work so drastically. Mm-hmm. Yeah, then you know, there's I think I talked about this in my the podcast that I did a couple months ago. There's there's this philosophical concept of the symmetry of life. You know, like you improve this and then this gets compromised. And then you touch this one and then there will be a cost.

You might not be aware of that for many years, that's fine. There's always a cost. But there's always a cost. You make too much money, something is gonna happen that you're not completely maybe you make a decision that I will lose that while pursuing this and I'm aware of it and I'm okay with the cost. That's okay.

Maybe you're not aware of the cost and that's another issue. But there's always a cost to everything. So sometimes just have to think like, you know, sometimes it's good enough and it's it's good enough is is excellent. Good enough is excellent. Exactly. It's you know, I know we all have different ambitions, different things that we want from life.

And and sometimes we don't stop to appreciate where we are so much. let's say twenty-five years ago, I used to dream with a lot of things. You know, I'm gonna do this when I grow up. I want to do this. And some of this I I've been able to to accomplish. And you know, sometimes because we live so

quick and fast paced that we don't get to stop and think and appreciate where we are. We forget about that. Mm-hmm. And it's good. And we all should appreciate where we are. Because it's been a lot of work and and it gives you a good foundation, right? Mm-hmm. To appreciate where you are, what you have accomplished and and and to be good with yourself, man. Mm-hmm. It's a lot of work. You have put a lot of work starting, you know, you have built your family. It's a lot of work that we put in

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (59:09.538)
to get to where we are. Mm-hmm. That if you don't take time to really appreciate it, who's gonna do it for you? Mm-hmm. You're just gonna be living the life repeating steps on a step without really being good with yourself. I think it's important. It really is. Yeah, yeah. And then one more thing is I think we all at least when we're teenagers or y young adults, we have this perfect design.

Of our lives, and this is where I want to get, and you will get there. Like if you design and you work for it, like things start to happen. But it gets to a point, at least in my life right now, where you start to think, like, you know, this is good, so I'm gonna keep working to make things better. But truth of the matter is that you can't see much beyond your feet.

So sometimes you you you you aim for something really high and then the cost is something that you're not willing to pay for. So sometimes it's good to just say, you know, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna keep doing my best, but whatever happens, I'm gonna try to be grateful for. and I think that that gives you that peace of mind and that's a feeling that's worth pursuing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Marcelo

I was watching the other day an interview. It's actually a Brazilian scientist, that he's trying to grow a brain in the lab. And it was fascinating for me because he was talking about the tissues and everything and how he they were trying to. Do you believe we can get to a point that we can build a brain inside a lab?

I think it's possible, but that's not my area of expertise, so I don't have any knowledge regarding like the, you know, molecular biology behind of behind that. So it's I but I think it's possible, yeah. Because he was explaining of course all the you know, the scientific terminology, the biology of it. I work mainly with neural networks. so I want to find a way to develop them better. especially the central executive network, areas such as the dorsal ladder.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:01:18.0)
Prefrontal cortex, which is in this area right here. what is that used for? That that's well that does many things, but one of the things it does in combination with other parts of the centroxecutive network, you e it's the basis of your self-control. It's the base of your inhibitory control in real life, let's say. and so you know that the that basically receives motivational signals from the ventrotegmental area. These are like very subcortical regions in the brain.

and it protects for example your your motor plan. So so let's say you're exercising or doing something complex and challenging and then you want to continue doing that, you need that motivation. and you know we see a lot of that in social media where people say I don't need motivation, I have discipline. Neurobiologically speaking neurobiologically speaking, that's not true. You always need motivation.

You need motivational signals. If you think about that, you know, the word in Spanish or Portuguese, you have

A reason for action, a motive for action. Right? So everything that you do, there is a reason behind. You might not be aware of that, but there is a reason or many different reasons behind. Every single thing. That lives inside the brain. That that's in there and that's feeding your actions. That's why you do whatever you do. So if you want to continue doing that, let's say if you want to maintain an exercise behavior, any other type of health behavior, there must be a reason for that. And so how to manipulate

That, how to leverage that, how to make people who are scared of exercise, how can we turn a low tolerant person, someone who's trying to avoid all types of effort and discomfort, into a high tolerant person and develop what we call anti-fragility, which is more than resilience. how to do that with like real people? I think that's the biggest challenge, and I think that's kind of what we're working toward. I want to peek on that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:03:19.056)
Discipline and motivation. So there are people that are may I think they're more motivated than others. Let's put the the example of going to the gym. I'm that person that I need motivation. Someone pushing me to go to the gym. Okay? There are some people that they say, and I don't know if that's because they're more disciplined or it's motivation.

Are we all having the same motivation or that's something that some people may have some motivation for a specific task than others? And that's why the discipline comes after and they're more disciplined because they're motivated so they're doing it. We already have the motivation. If you need motivation to go to the gym, then don't go to the gym. It's a very simple concept. Don't go to the gym. You need motivation to go to the gym. You need to find like a new reason, and you're not supposed to be there.

Now, I'm not saying you should not supposed to exercise. Right. Your body was designed for you to move. Right. There's no way around that. Right. It's it's a matter of what's the modality that you appreciate. That's what I want to do. That's all about modality because if I find something that you're really attracted to, that that that really, you know.

gets you thinking about that. You're gonna do it. Right. And you're gonna push yourself and you're gonna go it might be like dancing or climbing or fighting or I don't know, like n forging knives, whatever that is, but there must be a modality out there that you're really attracted to, that you would really like to get involved with. Right. So I think identifying the modality and then making that modality more complex and more intense, I think that's the path.

Why you know, you have to think about like some of these exercises are one hundred percent completely nonsensical. Think about that for a second. In what in what matters. Okay, treadmill. Yeah? Okay, what's the purpose of walking? To keep you moving. To get somewhere. To s the the regular walking. Yes, yes. Okay, you hope in the treadmill. You're not getting anywhere. No. Okay. So

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:05:33.986)
Parts of your brain do not understand why you're walking. Now you now you have a powerful prefrontal cortex. You can explain to yourself that you need to stay there to lose weight, that you need to stay there to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness, to get faster, whatever that you can explain that to yourself. But you also have some subcortical regions in your brain telling you, like, why the heck are you doing this? You're not going anywhere.

Okay, lifting weights. So does that mean that you shouldn't do that? I'm not saying you shouldn't do that.

But you have to understand the purpose of the activity. If you're So you can tell that to your brain. You can tell that yourself to yourself, but that that might be the reason the motivation is not there for a lot of people. Now if you're dancing, for example, and or if you're like, I don't know, rock climbing, and you may say, well when I'm gonna need to climb a rock this big in my life? The answer is probably never. Okay, but you have an old brain. You have an old brain.

The brain's 30,000 years old, if not older. We have evidence for like almost a hundred thousand years old. That's pretty much like the same in terms of structure, not in terms of function. But it's pretty much the same. Now if you're a climb, if you're like, wow, this was amazing. I got to the top. It's like, what's the purpose? You're not gonna have to climb that in your life. But it makes more sense.

to a lot of people. And so finding that modality that makes more sense to you and then you can make it challenging. You can make it more intense. You can make it more complex, right? But for some reason it's easier to stick to that routine. And so I think that's the path.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:07:17.27)
I don't I don't think that we have to be scared of intensity. some of the recommendations we currently have by the American College of Sports Medicine and many of the studies in the scientific community is that you should avoid things that make you feel bad. so we're talking specifically about affective states. So if you're exercising, let's say you hop on a treadmill.

You're just walking and it's fine. You're feeling okay. if the exercise intensity increases too much, it might be the case that if I ask like how you're feeling right now, you might pro you might report some negative affective states. So it starts to feel neutral and then eventually it starts to feel bad.

And so the recommendation is if you start to feel bad when you're exercising, maybe just reduce intensity. And then make sure that you feel happy, happy, happy all the time. And I say, but this is not supp you're not supposed to feel happy in this situation. This is called emotional disturbance. It's absolutely fine. wow. Because for your muscles to get bigger, what do you need? Protein. You need a lot of stress. You need to break the fibers, the whole thing, and then rebuild.

It's a basic physiological concept called supercompensation. For your emotions the same. You need major stress, psychological stress, in a controlled setting and then you rebuild. In a controlled setting. In a controlled setting, then you rebuild.

And then you become more resilient. So next time something bad happens, you're more likely to respond posit positive positively to that. But Brian Tracy's Brian Tracy said that life is a series of crises, right? Mm-hmm. You just left one. And you're in one right now, or you're about to start a new one. So you better be resilient. So with psychological stress it's very similar, right? With with exercise, the same. You're not supposed to feel like happy, happy, happy all the time. It's gonna hurt, it's gonna be uncomfortable.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:09:11.92)
But if you fight something you like, you might easily spend twelve hours a day doing that, right? So I think it's a matter of modality. I don't think it has anything to do with intensity. So that's why it's so important life experiences teaches one one way or the other. Right? It's an and the more experience you get, the more your brain in a way, it's knows how to react for what's coming next. But are you always are you ever gonna be ready?

For any event that it's thrown at you if you haven't experienced that? No. No, probably not. And many of the skills are might not be perfectly transferable. but we just

I think as a scientific community we want people not to like fall on their faces and you know collapse completely. Right. I think if you have a good level of emotional and physical resilience, then likelihood is you're not gonna collapse when something bad happens. And something bad will happen, it could be an accident, a disease, whatever that is. eventually it's only a matter of time to all of us, unfortunately. but I think, you know, if you have kids, for example, you want them to be mental

And physically strong because things are going to happen to them. So that's why you never protect them too much. You need to make sure they develop those skills so they're fully capable by the time they get to whatever 21 or 25 or hopefully earlier than that without pushing too hard so you don't break them too early, right? But I think that's the main challenge to develop anti fragility, you know, because you're not going to be fully prepared for everything. And stress, we have to be very careful with like stress inoculation.

Protocols. And we've seen a lot of research in that regard when in that topic, when people just, you know, they're trying to make you better, and then they give you a certain dose of stress, and then more stress, and then more stress. And what happens after is that you're not more resilient, you're just feeling more.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:11:11.144)
more pain when that stress happens again, right? So that also happens. It kind of backfires sometimes. so I think it's the controlled setting matters. It needs to be within the limits of self-efficacy and physical capacity, ideally related to something that you actually enjoy, but then we're gonna push. You're gonna push and that's the treatment sometimes for many conditions. We have projects with substance use disorder. Why? Because they're inhibitory control.

Their self-control is severely compromised. So, what do you do? You have to improve that cognitive function. They need to develop that ability to say no when they're supposed to. How do you do that? Pushing. Pushing. Stress. They need to deal with stressors. Usually, physical stressors are the safe type of stress because it's exercise. Right? And then you also have some of that transfers to other cognitive functions, not all of it. And that's why you still have to.

develop your medical cognition, your thinking, etc. How do you see longevity? And and I want to ask you back to the brain, but a lot of the conversation about longevity today, it's about how we look. People want to extend their lifespan, especially how they look.

What about ha our brain? let's say that we for whatever reason we can extend our years. Mm-hmm. What happened with this guy right here? I think we're more concerned about your health span and your peace of mind spin than your longevity. I think it would be a better goal to live a meaningful life for as long as possible. Right. experiencing peace of mind than just

living a hundred and twenty years or whatever that is. Even though we ha there are people that live all the way to one hundred and plus years. Mm-hmm. Well we don't see that I of course there are so many social factor, many different things that have an impact on that. But if we get to a point that you can live longer. Mm-hmm. Is there any study, is there anything happening at the brain level that it's also looking at how long, for example, the brain

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:13:33.066)
We have one study that I collaborate with some researchers in Brazil right now. They're looking at people over the age of a hundred years old and we're doing some E G analysis and they're also looking at like genetics, and psychophysiological responses. We're doing like a stress test with them, the cold pressure test to see how they react to stress. There's so man variables like associated with, you know, you leaving a hundred or eighty or a hundred twenty or thirty. so it's very difficult to predict how like the

Neurons are going to change, and most of these problems they have a non-linear statistical model associated with them. So that that's when things get really complex because most of the research conducted you know until the age of until like the year of like 2020 or 2022, most of the studies relied on linear analysis. We had like correlations and NOVAs and all of that. What we see right now is that most of the

Relationships of these variables are nonlinear, and so again it's like a neural network where you don't see how how exactly they interact, but they interact in a certain way that's very difficult to predict. But then when you get that statistical model and try to predict, for example, longevity, you tend to get a higher degree of predictability because the it's like the you know, when you go to the arcade and they have that game Plinkle with like all the little sticks, and then you drop a little ball and then

It hits the sticks and then it lands somewhere. In theory, you can perfectly predict where the ball is gonna land if you can control all the variables and you can calculate them every single time, it will be the same result, statistically speaking. But it's not a linear route all the way to the end, right? So it's the same thing. I think life is more complex because you have environmental factors. Yeah. And then you have your interpretation of it and and you have your cognitive appraisal.

And then everything changes as a response to that. And so so that's why it's so difficult to predict longevity, for example. That's why when you see like those easy predictions on apps and just based on biomarkers, it's a little bit more complex than that. Absolutely. There is a lot more that we usually don't think about that we should be. Because life isn't perfect, you know, environmental factors that come through on you. The psychological things about yourself and how

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:16:02.66)
how you relate to others, so many different things. after all you know about the brain, what still fascinates you about it? And

What are some of the things that you would like to see that we don't know today, for example? I think I think we still need like better statistical models to understand it. I think we still need to do much more in terms of the neural networks and I think we need to develop more our like idea of psychophysiological principles. one of the things that we work with is individual machine learning models for brain analysis. So

So it's it has to do with the principle of ergodicity and so most of the studies conducted up to the age of now are based on groups of people

Alright, so you have like a group of let's say a hundred people, they collect their data at a very specific time point or for it doesn't matter if it's for a year or six months, but for a from a group of people in a very specific time point and they they try to extrapolate that to a billion people over a long period of time.

So that's the that's the problem of ergodicity. And what usually happens is that you are one individual that doesn't have the same characteristics as these 100 people and you live throughout your life, meaning that things are gonna change for you. So it's almost like comparing a snapshot, a picture of this, with your the movie of your life. You will not transfer. It's just basic statistical limitation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:17:47.892)
What we try to do, and we're trying to do that in the lab now, is to basically get one individual and study that person for a long period of time. So you have individual machine learning models that only work for that person. It's not transferable. There is a problem of overfitting. Wow. Right? But over time it gets way better to a point where you can predict things for that individual. So these are called individual psychophysiological.

Profiles or individual machine learning models in this case, that you can start to predict after a certain amount of data when you reach theoretical saturation, that for you we can predict how you're gonna feel tomorrow if this happens to you, right? and and I think that's kind of the the biggest next frontier. Fascinating. And who's helping you guys on your research with that on the technology side? Is that is that those are the universities are developing their own.

L LMs, for example, models or or you guys use you partner with the private sector for example on that? No, most of the models we develop ourselves in the lab. so we have a group of students and postdocs in the lab, then we work together developing like the technology. Sometimes we collaborate with engineering or the medical sciences or we have collaborators all over the planet too. have thirty plus studies happening right now in different parts of the globe and

but most of the the neural networks and the machine learning models and the ai is done in the lab. Fascinating. Fascinating. Marcelo, it's been an absolute pleasure. Likewise. Anything you would like to tell us be before we end this conversation today? Yeah I think like the main message is the take-home message is you know

Try to find peace of mind, try to exercise, work on yourself, prioritize family, stay strong and look for help when you need it. And that's the and that list of priorities so the brain can continue on that, right? Yeah, focus on the two or three things that you can do and everything else goes to the trash can. That's life. Awesome. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for taking the time to be with us today. Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you everyone.