Life, Death & the Neuroscience of Your Unique Experience | Dr. David Linden

In this episode, my guest is Dr. David Linden, Ph.D., professor of
neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the
author of many popular books about the brain. We discuss individual
differences between people — focusing on differences in how people
sense the world around them and the roles that chance, heredity,
and life experiences (even in utero) play in determining our
physical and cognitive traits. We discuss the bidirectional
connection between the mind and body and how our thoughts and
mental practices (e.g., meditation and breathwork) impact our
health. We also discuss the link between inflammation and
depression. We also discuss Dr. Linden’s terminal illness
diagnosis, his mindset during chemotherapy and what his diagnosis
has taught him about the mind, gratitude, time perception and life.
This episode also covers sensual touch, cerebellar function, and
epigenetic inheritance and ought to be of interest to all
interested in neuroscience, genetics, psychology and human
development.  For show notes, including referenced articles
and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com. Use Ask
Huberman Lab, our new AI-powered platform, for a summary, clips,
and insights from this episode. Thank you to our sponsors AG1:
https://athleticgreens.com/huberman LMNT:
https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab Waking Up:
https://wakingup.com/huberman Momentous:
https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) David
Linden (00:04:15) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up (00:07:54) Sensory
Touch & Genitals, Krause Corpuscles (00:16:46) Sexual
Experiences & Sensation (00:19:14) Human Individuality &
Variation; Senses & Odor Detection (00:29:32) Sponsor: AG1
(00:31:22) Visual Individuality; Heat Tolerance; Early Life
Experiences & Variation (00:40:28) Auditory Variability,
Perfect Pitch (00:42:08) Heritability & Human Individuality:
Cognitive & Physical Traits (00:49:36) Heritability,
Environment, Personality; Twin Studies (01:01:19) Development,
Chance; Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance (01:07:37) Single
Generation Epigenetic Inheritance & Stress; Autism (01:15:52)
Sleep Paralysis; Cerebellum, Prediction (01:23:47) Nature vs.
Nature, Experience; Linden Hypothesis (01:30:37) Mind-Body
Interaction; Chemical Signals (01:39:10) Inflammation &
Depression (01:43:35) Neuroplasticity, Inflammation & Mental
Disorders; Microglial Cells, Exercise  (01:52:15) Fads &
Science (01:55:16) Mind-Body Communication; Cancer  (02:03:28)
Mind-Body, Mediation, Breathwork (02:07:30) Atrial Fibrillation,
Synovial Sarcoma, Heart  (02:14:22) Gratitude & Anger;
Chemotherapy, Curiosity & Time Perception (02:19:58) Death,
Brain & Future Prediction, Religion & Afterlife (02:24:15)
Life Advice; Time Perception & Gratitude (02:34:35) Zero-Cost
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