Welcome to the huberman live
podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for
everyday life. I met Drew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford
school of medicine. Today, we are discussing how to build tenacity
and willpower previous episodes of The huberman Lab podcast have focused on the topic of motivation and while motivation and willpower are linked. See matically and mechanistically today, we are going to discuss
NASA, T, that is the willingness to persist under pressure and resistance of different kinds and willpower which has to do with both the motivation to do things. And the motivation to resist certain things today, you will learn about the Psychology
and Neuroscience of tenacity and willpower. And I must tell
you, this is a fascinating literature. In fact, you will learn about a brain structure that at least to my knowledge, most neuroscientists are not even aware of.
And yet, in researching this
episode, I absolutely fell in love.
Of with this brain structure because of its incredible ability to integrate the
very sort of information from within. And from outside of you to harness and build tenacity and willpower. And indeed today, you will learn research supported tools for how to enhance your level of tenacity and
willpower in any circumstance. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of
my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science.
And science related tools to the general
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Can be problematic for mental health, and physical health. But for most people, I believe that enhancing ones level of tenacity, and willpower would be advantageous. Now, you'll be relieved to know that while there are a near infinite number of different circumstances, where one would need to draw on tenacity and willpower. In order to succeed, there is one major mechanism within the brain. Indeed one major mechanism by which tenacity and willpower are generated and it arrives through the activation of a particular brain center. That is a hub.
That is it lies at the interface of many other neural circuits and has input from all the critical neural circuits that one would need in order to generate tenacity and willpower now, we are going to return to that particular neural circuit. A little bit later after we talked about the psychology of willpower because in talking about the psychology of willpower, it will frame up as to why understanding this one particular brain Center or Hub of inputs and outputs from different neural structures in the brain and body will indeed allow
To get the most out of the tools that have been shown in scientific research to enhance your level of tenacity and willpower. In other words, understanding the psychology of tenacity and will power while valuable if it's coupled with an understanding of the underlying neural mechanism. And notice, I used the singular neural mechanism, not mechanisms for generating tenacity and willpower will allow you to use and to tailor the specific protocols for enhancing tenacity and willpower to your unique circumstances.
So this is yet another case, where certainly life circumstances vary from one person to the next, the need for tenacity and will power varies tremendously. For instance, some people may need more tenacity and willpower. In order to engage in certain behaviors. Others of us might need more tenacity and willpower in order to resist certain types of behaviors. Today, you will learn about the brain Center that governs all of that. And then you can frame it within the psychological understanding of tenacity and willpower, so that you can get the most
Out of the protocols that we will discuss. Let's start by talking about what tenacity and willpower clearly are and separating tenacity and willpower from some other psychological constructs that they often get confused with because this will be important in understanding exactly what we are trying to build. When we say, we want to build tenacity and willpower so tenacity, and willpower can be distinguished from habit. Execution, habit, execution is what you do any time you wake up in the morning, if you lie there for a bit maybe.
Get out of bed immediately. Hopefully you get outside and get some sunlight in your eyes, especially on cloudy days. Go brush your teeth. Use the restroom engage with others in your home. If you live with others, Etc, all of those sorts of behaviors. While on some days can be a bit more challenging, especially the get out of bed part, maybe didn't get a great night's sleep the night before, for instance, but all of those sorts of behaviors are behaviors that you have the neural circuits to generate and that typically, you can generate without a lot of willpower.
required now will power, sometimes also referred to as tenacity grit or persistence is a distinctly different phenomenon than habit execution, because willpower and tenacity require that we intervene in our own default neural processes such as habits or particular patterns of thinking, and essentially, govern ourselves to do, or not do some particular thing, and that process requires effort, it requires energy, and I think all of us,
Us are familiar with that feeling of effort or energy that's required in order to engage in a behavior that we really don't feel like engaging in or avoiding a behavior or thought that by default we would naturally just engage in. And when I talk about energy in this context, I'm mainly talking about neural energy, remember that neurons nerve cells in your brain and body use chemical and electrical signaling to communicate with one another, that's what allows you and all of us to do all the things that we do, think feel move at cetera.
Of course, that chemical and electrical communication requires fuel sources that indeed, come from things like glucose ketones. The creatine phosphate system, multiple fuel systems, feed the energetics of the brain. But ultimately, when I talk about energy in today's discussion, I'm talking about the energy required to engage in, or to resist, in a particular behavior and that level of energy can be quite High depending on how much resistance we are feeling internally or externally, right? Somebody
Can be telling us you're not going to be able to do this. You can't do it in. You can say no I have a ton of resolved, I have a ton of tenacity will power and I'm going to push past all the barriers that you are setting up for me on the outside often times all too often. I should say, we experience resistance from the inside where we are feeling like we don't want to do something or we really want to do something. And we are having trouble either engaging in the thing that we don't want to do or that we know we should do. But we just don't feel that level of motivation for
Or we are having a hard time resisting. The thing that's pulling us toward it. So in that context, it's important for us not to just distinguish tenacity and willpower from habit
execution, but also draw out a Continuum with tenacity and willpower at their, most extreme on one end of that. Continuum,
and apathy and yes, depression on the other end of that Continuum.
And we will return to the
topic of depression a little bit later, but I can just
queue it up right now by saying that one of the Hallmark features of major depression.
Is a lack of
positive anticipation about the future that leads to. This is important. There's a verb tense here that
leads to a much lower tendency to engage in the specific types
of behavior that would allow one to arrive at a particular new different and positive future.
So I'm deliberately putting apathy
and depression next to one another at one end of the Continuum and I'm putting
grit
persistence tenacity and willpower at the other end of the
Continuum, and a little bit later, it will become very clear.
You're to you, why? I put those particular items on the Continuum as opposed to other psychological constructs such as motivation,
because it turns out that motivation is what allows you to move up and down that Continuum, but motivation itself. As a verb is distinct from what
we call tenacity and will power and
motivation itself is distinct from what we
call apathy and depression.
But motivation is the engine or the motor, the
verb that allows you to move.
Up and down that Continuum and today, you will learn multiple tools that will allow you to move toward the tenacity and willpower end of that. Continuum, by engaging a, a very specific neural circuit. Before we get into the discussion of neural circuits, I'd like to talk about the psychology of
willpower and this is something that really has been considered
by psychologist for well over 100 years. William James wrote about this. The ancient Greeks
wrote about this. The topic of willpower is certainly
not a new one
and yet the formal study of
willpower in the
Pretoria context that is bringing human subjects into the laboratory and examining what sorts of conditions allow them to engage their willpower and tenacity. What sorts of
conditions really sap or
drain their willpower and
tenacity and of course, parallel
experiments. Done in what we call preclinical models, which are animal Studies have
revealed to us a lot about the
sorts of conditions that allow us to generate willpower and the sorts of conditions that drain our willpower. Now if we are to throw
Our arms around that entire literature. There is a big batch of that, literature, not the whole batch, but there's a big batch of that, literature
that believed and still believes that willpower is a limited resource
much like fuel in the body or fuel in a car.
Now, the idea of willpower as a limited resource is certainly not a new idea. But again, the formal study of willpower and willpower as a limited resource, really dates back a
little over 20, 25 years when Roy Boy,
My
sister and colleagues
started to explore the idea that of course, had been kicked around for years that with each additional decision that we have to engage
across the day and with each additional bout of willpower that we have to draw on as a resource
that we would drain this
reservoir of willpower that we all have within us now, Baumeister and colleagues referred to that process as ego. Depletion. Now, when
people hear the word ego,
some people think Freud ego super-ego is
And so forth, most people think ego, like, somebody having a big personality, where they think a lot of themselves.
When Baumeister referred to Ego depletion, he was defining ego depletion, as a concept of oneself,
and a concept of outside challenges, and the
degree of effort, required to bridge one's
concept of self and those challenges.
And so ego, depletion is really
a operational construct within the field of
psychology. So we don't want to get
too distracted by that word ego. There's a
Anytime people here ego they hear narcissism. Or if they your
gaslighting to immediately assume that they know what that means. When in fact, the formal definitions of those quite
often differ from the way that they're kicked around on social media, the internet, and even in a lot of popular writing about psychology,
okay? So let's just note that ego. Depletion is the term that Baumeister used to describe the ability for our
willpower to be depleted with each successive attempt to engage
willpower and bike.
Attention our ability to replenish
our degree of willpower if we take a break from making decisions and engaging our willpower. But
ego depletion itself, isn't the Focus right now, the Focus right now is whether or not indeed willpower is a limited resource, and whether or not with each decision that we
make, and each effort to either engage in an activity that we prefer not to at least in that moment. And with each
attempt to resist a
behavior thought, etcetera, that is pulling on us or that we
Feel that we want to engage in by default either eating the cookie, you're thinking the thought or engaging in a particular type of behavior of any kind, and we need to resist that
that it is draining. That will
power resource. Now,
before I go any further, I know that some of you out there are probably aware that ego depletion, and the Baumeister
theory of willpower is a limited resource has been very contentious, especially in recent years. And
so today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to first present the bow.
Meister and colleagues work about willpower as a limited resource. And then I'm going to present some of the conflicting evidence that Carol dweck my colleague at Stanford school of medicine, and researchers elsewhere have
carried out meta-analyses and entirely new experiments, which indeed in some cases, contradict the findings of Baumeister. But more often than not contradict the conclusions that Baumeister Drew about willpower. So if we are to understand the psychology of
willpower and tenacity, it's
important that we understand the concepts of
Go to pollution and willpower as a limited resource, even if after hearing all the evidence you decide that willpower is
not a limited resource.
And in fact I'm quite confident that once you hear about the Baumeister work and then you
hear about the work of dweck and others which in some
ways counters, the conclusions of Baumeister that you'll have a much firmer and certainly much more complete
understanding about what tenacity and willpower are. And perhaps and here, I'm revealing my own leanings when having examined the totality of the data that
tenacity and willpower in
Um, cases is a limited resource that can be replenished by engaging particular
processes within the body. That's right, within the body,
but that will power and tenacity and most importantly how to
engage tenacity, and willpower, especially when you have a lot of challenges in front of you. Not just one challenge but multiple challenges that need to be carried out throughout the day over weeks
over months. Etc that tenacity and willpower can be drawn upon repeatedly without them being depleted.
If you are clear on your beliefs about tenacity and willpower. So I realized that what I just brought up was a controversy about something that I haven't even discussed yet. So it might seem like a bit of a swirl of information for which there's really no
context. But the reason I bring up the controversy at this stage of our conversation
is that the moment that the words ego depletion or willpower is a limited resource falls out of my mouth I can hear those voices out there saying, wait a
second I thought that was all debunked and I want to make very clear will
power is a limited resource and ego depletion have not been debunked. It's simply a
controversial area of psychological research
and more importantly for today's discussion, we have
to understand the theory of willpower is a limited
resource. If we are to
understand the controversy that is the counter-argument of what willpower really is that comes from other groups. So I really want
to give you both sides of the story so that when we get to the underlying neural mechanisms for
tenacity and willpower and we get to the tools and protocols for increasing your level of tenacity and we'll
Our and your flexibility, a willpower in different contexts that you'll be able to get the most out of those tools and protocols.
Okay, so let's take a look at the
evidence that willpower is a limited resource.
Think, most of us are familiar with what willpower feels like.
That is what it feels like to be tenacious. And again there are two sides to this coin.
There's willpower and tenacity of the
sort of trying to
engage in a behavior
when we really don't want to or when our impulse is not to engage in that behavior. And I
I say when our
impulse is not to engage in that behavior because oftentimes we want to engage in the behavior. We want to study, we want to learn the
instrument, we want to perform well we want to exercise, we want the benefits of all those things so it's not that we don't want the outcomes or the rewards of those things and in many cases
it's not that we don't enjoy those activities but that for whatever reason we
are feeling a lack of motivation, we're drifting down that Continuum toward the more apathetic and of things. Hopefully not all the way too deep.
Session and apathy, but we're drifting that way or we're not far enough up the Continuum. And we're not engaging enough motivation to feel like the desire to do something either for its own sake, or for the rewards and outcomes of that thing are sufficient to allow us to just do that thing. Hence, the Nike slogan, just do it, which is a
wonderful slogan. Accept that in the absence of any understanding about the mechanisms of, how we can get
ourselves to just do something, often times. It falls short. And to
be honest,
Just any time I hear about people saying, well just eliminate the thinking and just do it, that is valuable advice until it doesn't work because when it doesn't
work, it simply doesn't work. And then you need to rely on other tools and mechanisms which are the sort that we will talk about today. So while I have great respect for the just do it, Mantra when it doesn't work, it doesn't offer any alternative solutions to engage tenacity, and willpower, and I
do not know anyone on this planet. I don't care if you're David Goggins or Courtney do Walter. There will be days.
Is when telling yourself
just do this or just don't do that is
not going to be sufficient for you to engage in the behaviors or resist. The behaviors or thoughts that you need to engage in or resist? That's just reality. And we should ask ourselves. Why is that reality? And
this is a very important point and, in fact, really illustrates the first bucket of tools and
protocols for increasing tenacity, and willpower, and these are the tools and protocols that I would categorize under the rubric of
Modulators I talked before on this
podcast about the important distinction between mediators and modulator is
mediators are
things either psychological or
biological Etc that are
directly in the mechanisms, that generate some sort of action or emotion. This could be neurochemicals like dopamine or serotonin. And so on
modulators are things that can modulate that is, can change our probability of doing
something or not doing something, but they do, so indirectly
and in the context of tools and protocols,
Calls to increase our level of tenacity and
willpower, I would be completely remiss. If one of the sets of tools that is the protocols for increasing the probability that we
can access high levels of tenacity, and willpower didn't include at least some of these modulator. So, I'm
just going to spend about three minutes on these module laters because what we know for certain
is that the regions of
the brain that generate
tenacity. And again,
there is literally a brain hub for generating willpower and tenacity.
T gets strong input from the so-called autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system has two
major components. They are referred to as the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. Keep in mind because when most people hear the
word sympathetic they think
sympathy they think emotion it has nothing to do with that. Simple means
together and the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system. I know that's a mouthful is responsible for generating
states of alertness in our brain and body, everything from Panic to being alert and calm.
Tendency to move or our likelihood of moving under pressure. It is also
responsible for our ability to resist movement when we need to resist movement and therefore, it's an active process.
So the sympathetic nervous system is all the things of action and when it is involved in generating in action, those are cases where in
action requires energy, okay? I want to be very clear about this. The sympathetic nervous system isn't just about moving our body.
Yeah although it has a lot to do with that. It is also responsible for our ability to resist movement, or thought or emotion. When we need to do that clamp down on ourselves, the parasympathetic aspect of our autonomic
nervous system is the one that sometimes referred
to as the rest and digest neural circuits and chemicals and that's
true but there's a lot more to the parasympathetic
component of the autonomic nervous system. It's also responsible for falling asleep. It's responsible for us feeling relaxed.
It is responsible for most of the states of
Mind and Body in which we are quite essent where we don't feel an Impulse to move or when we have a difficult time, getting into action.
So the sympathetic and the parasympathetic
aspect of the autonomic nervous system
are always in a
push-pull with one another think of them or less on a teeter-totter. When one end goes up, the other end goes down
there, really in competition
with one another and it's their balance that reflects how alert or how sleepy.
We happen to be. Now, the
reason I'm giving you this rather geeky nerd speak nomenclature filled discussion about the autonomic nervous system in the context of willpower is that regardless of whether or not, you believe willpower is a limited or an unlimited resource. We know, one thing for sure and that's that will power and tenacity ride on our current autonomic function. We can translate that to Everyday Language by saying that when we are well rested,
For instance, when we've been getting great sleep of sufficient
duration, the previous night, and the night before that, our level of tenacity, and willpower to engage in things
that we would not ordinarily, engage in by
default and our ability to resist behaviors, and
thought patterns, that would otherwise be our default behaviors and thought patterns is much higher conversely. When we are not getting enough quality, sleep on a regular basis, our ability to call on tenacity and will power is diminished.
Act. Now, that series of statements, I just made is clearly going
to be a duh, for most people. But it is very important to understand that when we are sleep deprived, when we are in physical pain, when we are in emotional pain and or when we are distracted, when we are thinking about something
else, aside from what we are trying to engage tenacity and willpower in order to do or not, do tenacity, and will power will be diminished.
Now, all of those things together are
As the bigger duh. We all know this. If you got a splinter in your foot
it's really hard to think about not thinking about something else.
If you are extremely hungry, or if you had an argument with somebody that you really care about and they said something that
was particularly vexing to you and
it's looping around in your head. It's going to be very hard to engage in something else that you need to
do because you're going to be distracted. Likewise, if you're sleep-deprived likewise, if you are a bit sick or run
down, if you're in any kind
of physical or emotional pain, your
T to draw on tenacity and will power will be diminished. So it's an absolute truth that your
ability to generate tenacity and willpower rides on a reservoir
of autonomic function.
And today we don't really have a way of quantifying the level of autonomic function or dysfunction in a very
simple way. It's not like resting heart rate, although resting heart rate is involved. For instance, if you haven't slept well for a few nights or if you're particularly stressed over trained, you'll wake up in the morning with
Significantly elevated. Heart
rate.
However there is no simple
metric like heart rate or blood pressure, or even cortisol level that can tell you whether or not your autonomic function is imbalance. That is the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems of your autonomic nervous system are in the best possible balance to generate tenacity and willpower we don't yet have such a metric. Although there are companies that are starting to develop devices that hopefully will give us indices of autonomic function or dysfunction,
but it is important that we acknowledge that if you're not taking care.
Our of the foundational
modulator 's of tenacity and willpower,
none of the subsequent tools and
protocols, that we will discuss are going to help you that much over time.
You might get tenacity and willpower to engage one
day when you're very sleep-deprived, but it's going to be very difficult to consistently engage tenacity and willpower for that
reason. If you
have any struggles with sleep, that is getting enough quality sleep on a regular basis. Please see the zero-cost toolkit for sleep that we put at huberman labs.com. Please also see.
See the perfect, your sleep master your sleep episodes, also at huberman live.com and please also see the episode with expert guest dr. Matthew Walker, professor of sleep neuroscience and psychology at University of California
Berkeley. We just revamp the human Lab website. So if you go to Hebron
live.com and you put something like sleep
into the search function, it will take you not just to the toolkit for sleep
but to the exact time
stamps that will queue up particular topics and protocols around sleep. So if you were to put
sleep and light, it would take you to those
Other protocols, you were to put, sleep, and magnesium three and eight. It would take you to those particular protocols and so on and so forth. Hey, I don't want to
get too far off topic here during today's discussion, but if you're not sleeping well, and if you're not managing your stress levels, well, it's going to be much
harder for you to engage tenacity and will power regardless
of the tools you
happen to use. And those tools could be everything from behavioral
tools to supplements to prescription drugs.
You need to get those foundational modulators in check and there are a lot of zero cost ways to do that that are all spelled out.
It very clearly at the resources, I just described likewise for stress if you're experiencing challenges with stress, both short term medium term or long term stress. If you think you have elevated cortisol levels, which by the way, may not be the case. There are a lot of tools for modulating stress in real time increasing your stress threshold etcetera. Simply go to the Cuban live.com website and put in stress threshold tools or stress real-time tools and you'll get a bunch of zero cost tools that will allow you to do that.
It's also worth mentioning that when we get to
our discussion about
The Neuroscience of tenacity and willpower that you will understand why
autonomic health. And autonomic function is so important for our ability to engage tenacity and willpower, I'll just tell you right now. It's because
the neural circuits of the autonomic nervous system provide direct and robust input to
this Hub in the brain. This brain location that governs. Our ability to allocate our mind and body toward particular activities or to resist particular activity.
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Okay, so let's think about the Baumeister data on will.
Power as a limited resource.
I'm going to briefly describe one of the first studies that really said to the
field. Willpower is a limited resource,
but I want to be clear that there are other studies like it and they all generally
follow the same contour and that General Contour is as follows
Baumeister and colleagues. And now many other Laboratories have done experiments where they bring human subjects
into the laboratory
and those human subjects have to do something that requires mental effort.
Or energy AKA will power.
The classic example of this is you bring people into the laboratory. Some of them might actually be dieting or fasted, although not always and
there are two platters set out for them. One platter contains radishes, just plain radishes. By the way, I hate radishes, unless they're pickled. Radishes wonder why
that is so these experiments picked my least favorite
vegetable? I love many other vegetables. I just stain the radish. That was just
A personal
editorial, in any case, the radishes are set out, and next to them are freshly baked cookies. And in the room, is the wafting
Aromas of freshly baked cookies. So I think it's fair to say that most people because of a hardwired tendency to like sugar and fat especially when they are combined would prefer to eat the cookies versus the
radishes. I know that there are some
mutants out there. They're saying I like
radishes more than cookies but look, most people like
cookies
More than radishes,
the subject in these studies are divided into two groups. One group is
told you have to resist eating the radishes.
The other group is told
you have to resist eating the cookies
and then the subjects are observed during this time typically but this is
really not what the experiment is about per se
this stage of the experiment is really designed to get people to resist,
a certain kind of behavior. And the Assumption again, this is an assumption because
there's no brain recordings here. No one's in an MRI machine.
Machine looking at what brain areas are activated or not activate. There's no
cortisol being measured at least not in these early
experiments. These people are either resisting. Something that's pretty easy to resist radishes or they are being asked to resist something that for most people is going to
be harder to resist than resisting radishes, which is resisting, freshly baked cookies, and that challenge has been made even more difficult by the wafting Aroma of freshly baked
cookies in the
Room. And in some cases has been made even
more difficult because these people are dieting. And
keep in mind that when you calorie restrict, or when you put yourself on a diet of any kind, there is a well-established
mechanism in the brain by which the neurons that engage
hunger, especially, hunger for fat and sugar and that respond to things like a Roma's. And taste are heightened. That is their activity levels
are heightened, which means that things that smell really good smell really, really
Lee good, when you're hungry,
things that ordinarily would taste really good
taste, really, really, really good when you finally eat
them. So, the key component of this stage of the experiment is to engage people's will
power. The second part of the experiment, has all of the subjects separately
engage in another challenging task,
and the challenging task that they are asked to engage in
is to solve a particular puzzle and again different experiments use different puzzles, different experiments, use different context but
The original experiments that Baumeister and colleagues did had people try and solve a puzzle
that could not be solved.
So it's very, very difficult. In
fact, it's impossible, but the
subjects weren't aware of that, and then was measured, was how long subjects, persisted in trying to solve this
impossible to solve puzzle.
Depending on whether or not previously, they had to resist
the radishes, which is pretty easy to resist or resist. The cookies, which is, at least harder to resist. And
Some people would be very, very hard to resist. Now you can probably already guess what the outcome of this and similar studies was because it birthed this entire belief Camp within the field of psychology that willpower is a limited resource.
The outcome was that if people had to resist the
cookies, which is harder to do than resisting, the radishes
that they would persist for less
time when they had to try and solve a
puzzle that unbeknownst to them, could not
be solved.
And conversely, if people had to resist something that was pretty easy to resist such as resisting eating radishes. Something that for me, would be very, very easy to
resist. Well, when they were subsequently faced with trying to solve a very difficult, indeed
impossible to solve
puzzle. They persisted much longer. Okay, so put very simply the study concluded that if you have to resist one thing and it's a hard thing to resist. Well, then you have
Less air quotes here resistance in, you will power
to engage in another difficult task. Subsequently.
Whereas, if you had an easy challenge just prior or no challenge, just prior to being faced
with a challenge such as a very difficult puzzle. Well, then you had more
resources more willpower to
apply to the solving of that puzzle.
So the conclusion that Baumeister, and colleagues Drew from those results was that willpower is a limited resource but it didn't specify nor, did they specify
exactly?
E what that limited resource is
and this was quite an attractive Theory because it jived well with most people's perception of what
willpower and tenacity was for them. This idea that yes there are things that challenge us both to do and to
resist but that we can do that. But when we are asked to do that again and again and again while we may build up some capacity to engage our willpower in tenacity and of course there are those rare individuals that we've heard about. And
some of us know that seemed
Have just a kind of bottomless Reservoir, a willpower and
tenacity. Most of us, have an intuitive understanding of how hard it is to constantly be in
friction with life to constantly have to push ourselves to do things and to resist things. And that while that capacity can
expand and grow and we can get better at it. That there does seem to be something here, just subjectively speaking. There does seem to be something about engaging
tenacity and willpower that.
Yeah, I can feel
Feel
good, but it also requires effort this neural energy that we were talking about.
So that raises the question of, okay, if willpower is a limited resource, what exactly? Is that resource
at a physiological level so
Baumeister and colleagues subsequently went on to explore. What
I think is a really interesting and clever idea. Frankly I can't confess that I would have thought of this,
but they did. He said, okay, you know, in some cases people are eating the cookie and then they're engaging in
this very difficult puzzle in other
Is there eating the radish and engaging this difficult puzzle? And
of course, other experiments used non-food challenging choices. But they came up with an idea which was the brain as one of the most
metabolically active organs in our entire body. If not the most metabolically active organ in our entire body requires a lot of fuel, it requires a lot of glucose. Now, of
course, the brain mainly runs on glucose, but
if you're following a ketogenic diet, your brain will mainly run on
ketones.
But for most people who are omnivores or eating
carbohydrates, glucose is the main and preferred fuel source for neurons for nerve cells, in your brain and body for that matter.
Baumeister and colleagues, raise the hypothesis that perhaps glucose availability itself
is the resource that's limiting willpower.
And in a whole set of experiments, they really showed that if people are asked to do a difficult task to engage their willpower and this could be done by resisting a particular Behavior.
Or by engaging in a particular Behavior, I'll just give you an example of engaging, in a particular behavior, that requires willpower, or at least
focus and mental energy, to contrast it with the resisting radishes versus resisting cookies, example, that I gave earlier,
one common practice within experiments like this is to give people a very long passage of words, so it's a story and then to give them some sort of rule about how
to edit that passage. Maybe they have to cross out
every third E4.
The ease that arrived in the middle of sentences. Next two consonants, but not other vowels, stuff that takes a lot of energy. So these are
dues as opposed to resisting behaviors like, we were talking about earlier resisting, the radish, resisting the cookies.
Although, in many of these experiments, there's a command to do
something, you know, cross out certain letter, he's in this passage.
But also to resist, the reflex to
cross out other he's and, of course, all this is under time pressure. And oftentimes, it's being rewarded or scored. This is the way that psychology
Is
get people to engage in particular experiments, and behaviors and resist certain things in the context
of a laboratory environment. When those things, frankly are kind of boring and meaningless, they'll pay you more. If you do well at the task, they'll give you money and then subtract
the money that you're going to get at the end of the experiment. If you make errors and things like that and they'll do it under time constraint, as I mentioned earlier. So, there were lots of different conditions for again. Here are quotes draining people's willpower and tenacity.
And certainly draining their mental attention and then they would have them do another subsequent task. So, in many ways, this just mirrors the
first cookie, radish experiment, done by Baumeister and colleagues,
but there was an important intervention, put between the first and the
second hard task
and that intervention was to give one
group a glucose beverage about 150 calories or so. So they would drink a glucose beverage to increase levels of
Glucose the preferred fuel source for the brain
versus giving them an artificially flavored drink or just water or something. That was of course, matched for flavor, but that
did not contain any glucose or calories. Now, this
is a clever experimental design. If you think about it because at least at a first glance, the only thing that really seems to be different is the availability of glucose for the brain and you're probably guess what? The
outcome of these studies was the outcome of these studies was that when
subjects are given glucose in between,
A first hard, task, that required willpower and a second hard task that required willpower.
And in some experiments,
third hard. Task that required willpower that their levels of
willpower, were maintained consistently from one task to the next and in some cases
increased from one task to the next
if they had more glucose
available because they drank this glucose drink. So
what's really interesting and frankly
really nice about these studies
is that they attempted to bridge. A
psychological construct like tenacity and willpower.
And to
Argument that willpower is an Expendable resource and yet it's an Expendable resource. That is replenishable by linking that to a physiological variable and the physiological variable they linked it to was glucose, availability in the
brain. Now, this set the field of psychology and in fact, the field of pop psychology that is the discussion about formal findings in the field of formal psychological research. Ablaze people were so
excited about this. I mean, this set of findings really pointed to the argument
that if you could just keep levels of brain glucose elevated across your day
or at least stable across the day that you would have more willpower and tenacity. This thing that humans have been seeking more of since the beginning of time. Now, all
of that seemed fine and good. And in
fact, a lot of products and
courses were born out of that literature. People were arguing
that you should sip on glucose drink while doing any kind of hard tasks that you should sip on glucose drinks between tasks
that
Should be thinking about literally fuel that you ingest into your body as
fuel for psychological processes, within your brain, that would allow you to perform better in work and school in athletics and relationships at all of
the domains of life. But of course, any time there is a prominence or a real
excitement about a particular finding in any field of science. But in particular in Psychology where it feels so applicable, as did the Baumeister results,
you are going to get other groups that are going to
try and replicate.
Those findings
and that are going to dig into the findings themselves. And look at the statistics, look at how, well, or poorly powered those studies where we don't want to get into a full
discussion about powering studies right now, but powering studies has a lot to do with addressing the question
of whether or not there were enough subjects in the study to
really draw the conclusion that one Drew or whether or
not the statistics fell out as yes. There was a significant effect of glucose ingestion on Willpower and tenacity. But if there,
Enough subjects will. Then there are other variables that
could potentially explain those results. So there were a lot of meta
analyses and other studies trying to replicate the work of
Baumeister, and that's where things got
controversial. Now, we can take a step back from all that controversy after all, we don't want to spend too much time on the
controversy itself, rather, we want to know what the counter interpretation of the Baumeister results
was, and I want to be very clear. There was no real dispute as to whether or not
Baumeister got the results that he and his colleagues claim to have.
Obtained, they did get those results.
The question really was about the interpretation is willpower a limited resource and if it is, is the physiological resource itself,
glucose availability to the brain. So in 2013, a colleague of mine at Stanford, dr. Carol dweck our department of psychology
did a study in which she examined this
idea that willpower is a limited resource.
And the idea that the resource that's limited is
glucose availability for the brain.
So do I can colleagues
Experiment that in many ways, mirrored the overall organization of the
experiments done by Baumeister. And colleagues, there was a difficult task, some cases, the difficult task was that Crossing out of particular, he's within a passage
task, followed by another difficult task. And the difficult task that came second was the Stroop task. This is a Tas I've talked about before on this podcast, although some episodes ago. So for those of you that are not familiar with the Stroop task, the Stroop task is where subjects are presented with words in different colors and they are instructed.
Added to either read the word. So to pay attention to the content of the word or to the color in which the font of the word is written. This might seem pretty easy to most of you, right? If I put up a card that says apple on it and apple is written in green, you probably wouldn't have a hard time if you had been instructed to
tell me what color is the word written in for you to say green? Okay. But if
I were to hold up a card that said read but the font is actually in the color green. It's a little bit harder and
I were to then do that for 100 cards or 300 cards, and put you under time pressure, where
you're losing money that you're sure to get if you make mistakes, or you will earn money at the end of the experiment,
if you get answers
correctly, well, then you start making more mistakes. That's just the way these experiments work. So they did a variation on the Stroop. Task that isn't exactly the way I just described it and the Stroop task. By the way, is one that's used to probe prefrontal cortex function, this area of our brain.
In right behind our foreheads. That is responsible for many things, but
in part is responsible for
context and strategy setting given a particular set of
rules. So if you get onto the bus or get onto the subway versus walk into a black-tie dinner, the context of rules are very, very different as to what you would say or not, say how you would behave how you
address your prefrontal cortex is largely although not entirely is largely responsible
for a lot of the context setting and Rule setting from one situation to the
Paxton if you think about the Stroop task it's really just a context-dependent
strategy task. You either have to pay attention to the meaning of the words or the colors in which those words are written.
And the number of mistakes that you'll make depends on how much time pressure, you're under
what sorts of neurologic or psychiatric challenges. You might be facing or not
facing so on and so forth, but it's a very
robust task that's existed in the scientific literature for a long period
of time. So the dweck experiment and by the way, there were actually three experiments in this
paper. I won't go through all of them in detail for sake of time, but I will
vide a link to the paper in the show. No
captions. But the major focus of the study was
to have people engage in one hard task. And then in another hard task, both of which drawn willpower testing. The idea that willpower is a limited resource
and then providing some of those
subjects with a glucose Rich
drink or other subjects with a drink
that was artificially sweetened. So it had no glucose, no calories, but tasted. Yes, they match them for taste. I know some of you who don't like artificial sweeteners or
saying those
Tastes exactly like real sugar but
they managed to match these drinks for Taste, but in one case, the drink would clearly increased blood glucose in the other case, the drink would not raise blood
glucose. So the results of this study
are really spectacular in my mind.
Because what this study found was that yes, indeed ingesting glucose can improve
performance on these. Multiple challenging willpower,
requiring tasks. However, the degree to which the glucose containing drink could improve.
It's depended on whether or not you believed that willpower was a limited resource and whether or not you believe that resource was glucose. In other words, if you hear and believe that willpower is a limited resource. Well, then indeed, with each, subsequent tasks, that you engage in or life event of any kind that you engage in
that requires willpower and tenacity,
you will have less willpower
and tenacity to draw
on. Whereas, if you believe that willpower and tenacity are,
Limited and in fact, are divorced from
blood glucose as the physiological source of willpower and tenacity.
Well, then you can engage in one challenging task, and another challenging task, and another challenging task without any
diminishment in performance.
Now, that of course, leaves us all in a very tough position because how are we to decide what to believe if we know that willpower can be a limited resource or
willpower cannot be a limited resource. Ah,
well, the results of the direct study and by the way, I should
Share
with you, the title is study. The title is study not surprisingly is
beliefs about willpower determine the impact of
glucose on self-control. And this was a study published in the proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. Again, I'll provide a link to the study in the show. No captions. There are three major experiments in this study. As I
mentioned before, I just gave you the major conclusion of all of them
so woven together and if it wasn't clear already, the major conclusions are that. Yes ingesting glucose can improve.
Ability to engage tenacity and willpower, AKA self-control from one task to the next
provided that you believe that glucose is the limiting resource for
engaging tenacity will power. If you don't believe that.
Well, then you can engage tenacity and
willpower without ingesting glucose, and that's where the artificially flavored drink comes in. I'll leave it to you to kind of unpack, what, that means,
experimental e. But it's a very clever experimental design that do. I can colleagues came up with because it argues that. Yes, indeed.
It's hard to do a challenging thing
right after another challenging thing,
but there's no reason to think that you can't do both of those
things. While engaging the utmost tenacity and willpower,
if you believe that tenacity will power exists within you as a single mechanism that can be harnessed and that it's not a single mechanism, that has a reservoir that
runs down as you engage in one hard thing to the next. Now, this
is very important because we are about to transition into our
discussion of the
Physiological that is the neural underpinnings of tenacity and willpower
which as it turns out is one major
set of brain
circuits. There could be others that are yet to be discovered, but we know that there is one major set of brain circuits and particular one brain area, believe it or not, that an entire collection of more than two dozen studies. Really points to as the seat, the origin of what we
call tenacity and willpower.
But before we transition to that and the tools and protocols that that
At
physiological neurological standing set forth for us to all use and
apply. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Baumeister wasn't about to hear
these results from do. I can colleagues and just
say, Okay, willpower is not a limited resource, it's not blood glucose, it's all what you
believe about, willpower. It's all what you believe about? Blood
glucose, rather Baumeister himself. Went back to the lab and did subsequent experiments that in some ways, not all counter the dweck
I'm not trying to confuse anybody but I wouldn't be doing my job.
If I didn't give you both sides of the story.
Now the good news is that the tools and protocols that we are going to arrive at work regardless of
which psychological Camp you happen to be in the Baumeister camp or the
duet camp. Now, I don't want to give the impression that these are warring camps. And I also don't want to give the impression that these are the only two camps of
thought and experimentation, with in the field of tenacity will power. There are many groups working on these subjects. Indeed,
there have been meta-analyses that have confirmed,
Firmed the major theories of Baumeister and there are meta analyses that have
refuted the major findings of Baumeister. I will provide links in the show notes captions to a couple examples of each so that you have those to peruse. If you like
but let's discuss for a moment. What Baumeister found when they went back and re
research? I think that's a word research.
The idea that willpower is a limited resource and that glucose
is that limiting resource Baumeister in colleagues looked at the direct data and said, okay, fine. The data look,
It except for the fact that in real life, and in many previous experiments that they and others had done, it wasn't just too
hard challenges back-to-back, but often two or three, or four
and what Baumeister and others found was that when subjects are presented, not with, just two
challenges back-to-back,
but three or more
challenges. So, back-to-back-to-back-to-back challenges that have to engage a
lot of neural energy, a lot of willpower
tenacity resistance to do certain things. And
And effort to engage in certain kinds of behaviors and cognitive processes that
when subjects had glucose available
to them in the brain by way of ingesting. These glucose drinks, sipping, those in between the tasks, sometimes, even during
the tasks that their performance, that is their willpower
and tenacity. To engage in challenges was
maintained across
those multiple challenges
and they conceded. That one's belief about willpower could indeed dictate whether or not willpower.
Was or was not a limited resource and whether glucose would or would not enhance one's ability to engage willpower, but they argued that if one confronts multiple challenging circumstances as is very naturalistic
as we say, it's very typical of everyday real life. Then the availability
of glucose during and between tasks, the ability for the brain to engage in its external environment and take reads of its internal environment.
How we feel inside relative to what's expected of us
was very valuable in allowing people to engage this thing.
That psychologically we describe as tenacity and willpower,
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let's talk.
About the physiology of tenacity and willpower.
And I assure you that the conversation we are about to have is not going to be just a bunch of nomenclature and mechanistic understanding of the origins of tenacity and willpower, rather it argues that tenacity and
willpower have a unified source.
That is a specific set of brain areas that when active engage that
feeling of tenacity and willpower regardless of what we are
confronted with regardless of whether or not we are trying to engage
in something that reflexively we wouldn't
otherwise want to engage in and
regardless of whether or not we are confronted with something that we have to
resist. And to me, that's
extremely reassuring. Because whether or not you believe that blood glucose is the limiting resource for willpower whether or not you believe that your
beliefs about willpower and blood glucose impact your level of willpower.
What? We know for sure is that there's a single set of brain circuits indeed. There's a single brain area that seems to be able to largely if not entirely.
Entirely explain this phenomenon that we call tenacity and willpower
and that should be reassuring because what it means is that tenacity and willpower is the reflection of a neural circuit function that is a skill. It's an expression of something that we all have within us. We all have this particular brain area and quite exciting. Lee, this is the third point. This brain area is highly subject to plasticity. There are specific things that we can do and there are specific mind.
Sets that we can adopt that allow us to increase the activity of this particular brain area. Indeed to increase the size of this particular brain area so that we can call on tenacity and
willpower not just in one circumstance like school or musical learning or athletic Endeavors were relationship Endeavors, but rather that we can call on this brain area in the context of any and all circumstances where willpower and tenacity are
required. Now we talked about Neuroscience a lot on this podcast but it's not.
Fin that I point to a particular brain area and can confidently say this particular brain area has an absolutely integral role in something as kind of high-level
psychological as tenacity and willpower,
but today we can do that and that's because there's a collection of more than two dozen studies that point to one particular brain area. And of course it's connections
with other brain areas because no single brain area operates in isolation every brain areas operating in the context of
Neural circuits, other brain areas that it
receives inputs from and gives inputs 2 and so on. But this one particular brain area really does
seem to underlie what we call tenacity and willpower. And we know that through several lines of evidence. First of all, I'll tell you the name of the brain area, although the name itself isn't going to tell you much, unless you're a neuroscientist or a Natomas. So I'll give a little bit of background about it.
The name of the brain area is the anterior, mid cingulate cortex, the anterior, mid cingulate cortex.
Sex is part of a larger brain
area called the cingulate cortex and in humans versus animals, it goes by slightly different names. Unfortunately is just one of the consequences of different researchers in different Labs
calling the same thing, different
things, he'd be really frustrating, but will make it very simple because
today we will refer to this
area as the
anterior, mid cingulate cortex, which is a subdivision of a larger brain area,
simply called the cingulate cortex and
the anterior mid cingulate cortex resides.
In the frontal lobes. So it's behind your forehead. Although that doesn't tell you anything
because all of your brain is behind your forehead. If you think about it
and it's about a third of the way back toward the back of your head, and you actually have two of these structures to anterior. Mid cingulate cortices one on each side of the brain and they receive a lot of inputs from a lot of different areas
and we'll talk about what those areas are because this is extremely
important when thinking about the different psychological and
physiological resources that you can draw.
On to engage tenacity and
willpower. But for the time being, let me just go through the evidence and kind of list format of why we feel so confident. That the anterior mid cingulate cortex is such a vital
hub for engaging tenacity and willpower
for each of these points that I'm about. To make there
is indeed at least one if not several quality peer
reviewed studies in humans. So there's a lot of data from animals, both rodents and primate models Etc.
That we're not talking about today, but I should mention all of which supports
the human data and vice versa.
The data I'm going to describe now come from humans and from a variety of different types of studies. So there are a lot of different ways that one can consider. If a brain
area is implicated in a given psychological or physiological phenomenon like motivation or sadness or visual
perception and those include, for instance, if a brain area
is active during a given phenomenon. So
Way to explore. This is to put, literally wire
electrodes down below. The skull record the electrical activity of neurons and assess whether or not the electrical activity of those neurons changes. When a person to say viewing
faces or feeling a
particular way, like feeling tenacious for feeling bored or feeling
aggressive. And so, on another way of assessing, a particular brain areas role in the given
physiological or psychological
phenomenon is in individuals where that particular brain area is
injured. You might expect that a particular phenomenon like willpower.
Our like the ability to perceive faces is present or absent, whether or not it's exacerbated, or whether or not, it's diminished
other ways of assessing whether or not a given brain areas involved in a given phenomenon, is whether or not that brain area, literally changes size whether or not changes in volume, over the course of some sort of training. So, for
instance, if somebody is not able to play a musical instrument, which is myself, and then I or
subject in one of these experiments learns, a musical instrument,
And the
volume the size of the particular brain area is assessed across
the learning or simply before and after that
musical learning and it grows or perhaps, even if it shrinks or changes shape. One might determine that it is somehow
somehow involved in the process of learning a musical
instrument, you couldn't unequivocally conclude that, but along with other types of evidence, one
could perhaps conclude that.
So that's just a partial list of ways to assess brain area function. Other ways include
Assessing what other areas a given brain area gets input from? So for instance, in the case of the anterior, mid cingulate cortex, we will soon discuss the fact that it gets
robust input from the autonomic nervous system which you already learned about it, gets robust input from
reward systems of the brain, such as the dopamine and serotonin based reward systems of the brain. And it gets robust input from the context and strategy
setting areas of the brain as well and many other different brain areas.
So there's a structural logic.
Eric. As to why the anterior mid cingulate
cortex would be involved in tenacity and
willpower but no single anatomical or physiological or lesion
based finding is
as compelling as when we consider all of the
results about the interior mid, cingulate cortex together and side-by-side. So for
instance recordings by neural Imaging of the anterior mid cingulate cortex. In an unbiased way. Meaning people are put into a brain scanner and brain activity is examined and mass all
of the
In areas are looked at and people are presented with either a hard task or an easy task
revealed that the anteroom ID cingulate cortex shows elevated levels of activity
in the hard versus the easy task. And again, I want to point out that the researchers were not looking for that result. They simply observed that result.
In addition, if people who exhibit, high levels of academic performance across, many different subjects are put into a brain scanner that evaluates so-called resting state connectivity. So no talking
Task, but simply levels of activity in different brain areas that occur
spontaneously. So they're just sitting in the scanner, looking at a blank screen, the
resting or spontaneous levels of activity in the anterior, mid cingulate cortex of high achieving individuals is
higher relative to those of lower achieving individuals.
In addition people that have lesions or disruptions of anterior, mid cingulate cortical function, show, increased,
apathy, and depression, and reduced.
Of tenacity and motivation across the board, regardless of what domain of life one is asking about whether or not it's athletic or academic, Etc,
indeed, successful, dieters show, elevated spontaneous n, what's called evoked levels of
activity? In the anterior, mid cingulate cortex. So spontaneous, again, just at rest, they have higher levels of activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and for those
that are presented with food, and they have to resist that food and they have to resist,
The smell of that food, and the potential taste of that food. The activity of the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex. Goes up even further, especially in those individuals who can resist that is, who can engage willpower to not eat the delicious food item.
Conversely individuals that have failed to exert, sufficient willpower
to lose their desired weight. And this was for medical reasons related to trying to achieve Medical Health.
as well as people who are obese seem to have diminished
levels of activity in the anterior, mid cingulate cortex,
In addition people who are depressed, who Express a lot of apathy.
And here we're talking about clinically diagnosed major depression show, reduced levels
of activity, in the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex, humans that Express a lot of what's called learned
helplessness. That is they've adopted. The belief in the actions associated with the belief that no matter what they do, the outcomes are not going to be what they desire. Expressed lower levels of neural activity. In the anterior, mid cingulate cortex so you can see this list goes on and on but in fact gets even more interesting.
Number earlier, I mentioned that successful dieters
have elevated levels of neural activity in the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex. Now that might seem like a good thing and indeed it can be a good thing. But there's a
pathologic condition associated with dieting and one's ability to engage willpower and resist food
and that's in the case of eating
disorders, such as anorexia
nervosa. Now, I've done a huberman Lab
podcast solo episode about anorexia nervosa. And on that podcast, I made the point that I'll make again now, which is that anorexia nervosa
is
The most deadly
of all the psychiatric conditions leading to death in a very large percentage of people that have it. Now
fortunately, there are treatments and more emerging all the time but it's a very serious
psychological and physiological condition that is extremely deadly
individuals with anorexia nervosa exhibit. Heightened levels of activity in their anterior, mid cingulate cortex, both at rest and when presented with food. And I don't want to go on a full
tangent about anorexia because we covered anorexia on the previous
Podcast episode about anorexia which by the way you can find it huberman live.com, simply search anorexia or eating disorders within the search function.
But one of the clear symptoms of anorexia nervosa is that
the reward Pathways of the brain, which we
know feed into that is send direct connections to the
anterior, mid cingulate cortex,
seem to be activated under conditions in which people with
anorexia.
Avoid food as opposed to eat
food and then there's a very interesting and positive literature about so-called
super agers.
So what we know for
sure is that as people age in particular between the ages of 60 and
90, there is a reduction in the size
of many brain areas. But the anterior, mid cingulate cortex in particular, unless certain things are done to offset that we are going to talk about what those particular things are in just a few minutes, but
there's a particular category of humans, that's alive now.
And that live a very long time. These are the people that stand the greatest chance of becoming
centenarians and many of them are centenarians so-called super agers.
But also within the category of super agers are people who are 60 years old or more
because not all of them have reached 80 90 yet
and have the cognition of 40 year, olds 30 year olds
and often even of people in their mid-20s. Now
there are a lot of things that are different
about these super agers super agers in the sense that they are.
Maintaining very
youthful levels of cognition, but one of the things that's become very
apparent from the neuroimaging data is that super agers, maintain a volume, a size of the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex. That is significantly greater than their age matched cohorts.
So the exciting thing is that there are many many lines of evidence pointing to the fact that the anterior mid cingulate cortex, at least has something to do with our ability to
generate tenacity and willpower and
that it
When active moves us up that Continuum away from apathy and
depression toward
states of being able to engage in or
resist particular types of
behaviors. So what I just described as a bunch of neuroimaging, structural volume data blood uptake data, lesion studies and so on and so forth. But we can simplify all of that. And in fact address something that perhaps I should have said earlier which is that when we're talking about tenacity and willpower,
We're really talking about one of two things.
We are either talking about that sense within us that
has a saying I will no matter what you tell me, no matter what you put in front of me, no matter
what is rolled my way, I will
blank. Now the other expression of tenacity and willpower is that
within us within you, within me when tenacity and willpower are
active,
we have that sense within us.
Us that feeling in our
body and that thought pattern
AKA feeling in our brain
that no matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter what you put in front of me, I
won't. So really willpower is either an expression of I
will, or I
absolutely will is perhaps a better way to State it or I
absolutely won't.
Now that might seem like just a simple subjective reordering of a bunch of
physiological data and psychology studies.
It's not, it's actually far more important for us to understand
this. I absolutely will and I absolutely won't
aspect of willpower because if indeed there is a single brain area that can govern willpower and willpower is not one
but is at least two things. The sense of I absolutely will no matter what you say do etcetera, where I
absolutely won't no matter what
you say do etcetera.
Well then this brain area can't be
A simple switch. It can't be will power on will power off, will
power on will power
off? It can't be
absolute. As we say, they must be graded, it must have levels, so
it's more like a slider,
on a light switch then in on versus off, light switch.
In addition to that, if there is truly one brain area, that plays a critical role,
in generating tenacity and willpower
and tenacity and willpower something that is required from us. In a
Of different contexts where we
have to say I absolutely will. Yes this I
absolutely won't know that I absolutely will also. Yes,
this etc etc. Right. Because life is complex. Even just the simple thing of say
dieting or trying to
get a particular degree or trying to navigate,
even a simple illness.
Like I'm going to get through this week, despite feeling lousy, I'm going to take good care of myself. You know,
all of these things in some sense
require tenacity willpower and the behaviors we need to
engage in and avoid engaging.
In is very Dynamic, depending not just on who
we are and what we're trying to
do or not do but also where we are that day that moment. Well, that means that the anteroom, it cingulate cortex also needs access to information about context. It needs to understand what's rewarding or non
rewarding in the context of what we're trying to accomplish. Not just what feels good in the
moment. Now, fortunately, there have been a number of studies, exploring not just the activity levels of the interim. It cingulate cortex.
X or the size of the Interior made signal at cortex and the various conditions. We talked about before depression, obesity successful, dieters successful student successful athletes
etcetera but a lot of anatomical
tracing studies. Both from fixed that is from
Dead brain tissue. So post-mortem brain tissue in humans but also nowadays there are certain
types of neuroimaging particular something called diffusion tensor Imaging, that allows one to examine the flow of
information in and out of different brain
areas through.
So called white matter. Tracks tracks meaning TR a CTS track.
So these are the wires that connect neurons are called axons. And those axons are in sheath with a fatty substance called myelin and that in Cheeseman with Milan, allows them
to transmit information, very quickly, you'll see where I'm going with all this in just a moment.
And what we know is that the enter mid cingulate cortex, again of
which you have one on each side of the brain, about a third of the way, back from your forehead to the back of your brain.
Right above the so called corpus callosum. This very robust collection of white matter. Tracts that connects the two sides of the brain. Well, it gets input
and sends input to a number of different brain areas including but not limited to the following autonomic centers. That control, for instance, cardiovascular
function, increases or decreases in heart rate respiration, how fast, and how deeply you breathe, or how shallowly, and slowly, you breathe
immune system inputs, and
outputs with the spleen, not directly but through a couple of different stations with the very organs in your
body that can release B cells and T cells, and immune molecules that can combat bacterial viral and fungal infections, and they could repair physical wounds
and it communicates with the endocrine system with the systems of the brain and body that release for
instance, estrogen and testosterone which, by the way, are present in both males and females and
on a previous episode of the human Lab podcast with
Robert sapolsky as my guest, we talked about, for instance, the role of
testosterone and many people think, oh testosterone is all about aggression to stas. Tirone is all about attack testosterone is all about mating. That is completely false while it can be involved in those different processes. What dr. Sapolsky and I discussed, is that one of the major functions of testosterone in the
brain is to
make effort feel good and you can see and
we'll talk a little bit more about how that links up very directly with this
concept of
Tenacity and
willpower. So the first point is that the interior mid cingulate cortex is in direct communication with all of the areas of the brain and through a couple of other stations, the body
that modulate, our sense of tenacity and willpower which we talked about earlier, the need for Sleep, the need for
pain or lack of pain, or emotional Comfort or discomfort to
modulate our level of tenacity and will
power. The interior mid cingulate cortex,
Also directly linked up with Prix motor centers. These are the centers of the brain that organize particular patterns of
behavior, and indeed that can suppress particular patterns of behavior. As I tell you that you're probably filling in the blanks. This is engaging in a behavior or resisting, a behavior,
the interior mid cingulate cortex is also directly wired in with the reward Pathways of the brain. It can trigger the release of dopamine. It can also respond
to the release of dopamine and that dopamine release could be generated behaviorally.
Could be generated through some sort of food reward, it
could be pharmacologic, there are a number of different ways that the dopamine system can communicate with
the interim. It cingulate cortex. The point here is that it is in direct communication with the anterior, mid cingulate cortex and the anterior missing like cortex is in direct communication with the dopamine
system. And what I just gave you is frankly, just a
partial list of the different areas of the brain that are communicating robustly with the anterior, mid cingulate cortex, it gets information about interoception our readout of how we feel in our
Howdy it also has
robust inputs and outputs with the areas of the brain that are associated with extra reception, our perception of what is out around us. So all of that provides a logical basis for the neuroimaging data, the lesion data, the volumetric data, that we talked about a few minutes ago, in the context of depression, anxiety, high-performance anorexia and so
on. But one of the most important arguments that's ever been made in favor of the interim, it cingulate cortex being a major seat
for tenacity and
Power comes from dr. Lisa, Feldman. Barrett, who is soon to be
a guest on the huberman Lab podcast, we've actually recorded that episode already and it should be out very
soon, Lisa's laboratory as well known for pioneering research, on emotion, and effect. I
strongly encourage you to listen to that episode. Once it comes
out. And it was actually, Lisa herself. That queued me to the importance of the anterior, mid cingulate cortex, and Lisa and colleagues have written several spectacular reviews,
about the anterior, mid cingulate cortex and its role in
Tenacity and motivation, I will provide links to a few of those in the show. No
captions. One that I'm particularly excited about the one that I've spent now, an immense amount of time with is entitled, The tenacious brain, how the interim it cingulate cortex contributes to achieving goals. So if you have a background in biology, even if you don't think
you'll find that review to be very
interesting and it further
substantiates a lot of the points that I made a few moments ago about the different scenarios and types of individuals that seem to be able to engage their interim. It cingulate cortex.
X under different conditions and to a greater or lesser extent than others.
So hats off to Lisa for queuing me to this
incredibly interesting brain structure. I had known that it existed trolley teach neuroanatomy to medical students at Stanford and I talked neuroanatomy for many many years, but I don't think enough people and
indeed very few professional. Neuroscientist could tell you what the anterior mid cingulate
cortex does, but it has this apparently incredible function in generating tenacity and motivation
along those lines. One of the most incredible and important studies
About the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex and its capacity to generate feelings of tenacity and will power
comes from one of my colleagues at Stanford Joe. Parr
VZ
who essentially went into human beings who
needed. Brain surgery for other
reasons. And stimulated particular brain areas with a very high degree of
precision.
The title of the paper that I'm referring to was published in 2013 in the journal, neuron cell Press Journal, excellent Journal.
And it's entitled, the will to persevere induced by electrical stimulation of the human cingulate gyrus. Now, you'll notice the title said human cingulate gyrus not anterior, mid cingulate
gyrus
but because they had electrodes and a stimulation technique that would allow them to stimulate in very small regions extending as little as 5. Mm, but no more away from the stimulation site. They were able to march the stimulation around different sub-regions of the cingulate
gyrus.
Humans while those people were awake and then ask those people, how do you feel what are you experiencing In This Moment? In
addition to that they were recording various autonomic parameters from those people. So heart rate breathing in addition, to brain wave activity. So what the subjects report when their interior mid cingulate cortex was
stimulated is
that in their words,
something was about to happen. They
felt as if there was some sort of pressure upon them from
the outside, not physical pressure but that
something was about
Out to happen. In fact, one of the subjects describe the sensation as it says, if there's a storm off in the distance, but I know I need to go into the storm and I know I can make
it through the storm.
Another subject describes the experience of having their interior mid cingulate cortex, stimulated as, okay? Something
not necessarily good is going to happen, but I know that I need to Marshal resources and resist and I'm confident that I can push through now because
Perv easy and colleagues are excellent.
Scientists. They of course did control experiments where they would tell the person. Okay, we're stimulating that same brain area. That a moment ago, you told me created this feeling of
some pressure upon you that you have to resist some sense
of fight or urgency to push back. But in reality During certain control
conditions, they were not stimulating those brain areas and the subjects then reported,
I don't feel like anything is about
to happen.
Yeah, I don't feel anything at
all. In other words, it was the stimulation of the Interior, mid cingulate
cortex and only the anterior. Mid cingulate cortex,
that created the sensation within people that there was something to resist, that there was something putting pressure on them again, not physical
pressure, but psychological
pressure and that they were going to have to Marshal
resources in order to push back upon. In
fact, they reported feeling as if their body was getting ready
to do something. One subject said something along the lines of, I feel like I'm about to do something.
Got to go someplace or do something to resist. This foreboding sense. That's now coming over me.
So, this is very interesting and of course, is in line with all of the data that we discussed before
about neural activity.
Patterns, both spontaneous and evoked
about brain volume changes in the entertainment cingulate
cortex so on and so forth. And it really points to the idea that the anterior mid cingulate cortex is a hub. A hub that receives information from A diversity of brain areas that we talked about a few minutes ago.
Go and that generates a particular sense within us that we are going to be forward Center of mass that we are going to resist something.
And that perhaps we are going to move or act in some particular way or as we've been discussing all
along resist action
in some particular way, but that it requires that we Marshall resources, which takes us back of course, to the studies of Baumeister and indeed of dweck
where they explored willpower as a limited resource perhaps.
Coast perhaps as that limited resource beliefs about willpower and glucose probably with a high degree of certainty are going to be involved there
too. But regardless of that controversy it's clear that there's an energy required, there's an activation state of Engagement or resistance,
to a particular Behavior or thought pattern, that we all associate with this phenomenon of tenacity and
willpower and in a kind of miraculous way, you know, as a neuroscientist were
Generally taught nowadays, that individual brain areas, don't really trigger
individual functions, and perceptions of the brain. There are a few exceptions
to that, you know, you have a
fusiform face area that really does seem to be involved in the perception of faces and when lesion you can't recognize faces but
outside of just a few limited context, it's very rare. That one comes across a literature that cross all of the studies involved point to a single brain structure and its networks as giving rise to
Something as complex and flexible as tenacity, and willpower.
But in the case of the Interior mid cingulate cortex, it really does seem to meet those
criteria as the brain Hub responsible for tenacity and willpower
now a key idea that dr. Feldman Barrett has contributed to studies of the internment cingulate cortex. As a structure that helps us
generate what we call tenacity and willpower to help us achieve different types of goals.
Is this idea of a low, stasis. Most of you have, perhaps heard
Heard of homeostasis, which is the idea that all of our cells, all of our organs, indeed our entire body and psychology are always seeking
homeostasis the perfect balance of sleep and activity of
food and burning
fuels of oxygen and carbon dioxide and so on and so forth. And
while homeostasis, certainly exists and is a valid phenomenon, and there's also a concept that we hear far less
about, but that is equally important, which is the concept of a low stasis, Alla. Stasis
is the idea.
That much of what our brain and body
needs to do. But especially our brain is to allocate right, Alo stasis, to
allocate resources to particular functions depending on our
motivational goals and the challenges upon
us. And in, every way what we understand
about the structure and function of the anterior, mid cingulate cortex, is that it is doing, just that
it is deciding how much glucose should have given brain area consume, perhaps a brain area
that's involved in visual perception because you're in,
Evolved in a motivational
task. Where in order to succeed, you need to pay careful. Visual
attention to particular things or you're
involved in a task, we have to listen to particular things or perhaps you are involved in a physical foot race where you
don't want to allocate a lot of energy towards thinking about your stride, or your step, unless that's
necessary. And you actually want to shut down your brain
activity as much as possible
except for the brain areas that are required to get you to continue to run. In that sense, the interior mid cingulate cortex.
As a sort of a dial on how much fuel is consumed, not by the brain and body as a
whole. But by individual brain and body parts meets
all the criteria of what you would want, for a brain
area, that controls things like tenacity and willpower. Because
even for those individuals who seem
to just have an endless supply of tenacity and willpower, they to have to go into habitual Behavior.
They can't simply lean into every aspect of life with the
kind of resistance.
It's from outside. And the resistance against
those outside forces, or even resistance to internal forces voices in their head
etcetera on a constant basis, they still need to sleep. They still need to be
functional in that expression of tenacity and will power.
They need to be able to strategy
switch. And they need to be able to
come off the gas as we say, not because tenacity and willpower are necessarily a limited
resource. But because for so many aspects of Life, engaging tenacity,
and willpower is not advantageous.
Hence, the example I gave earlier about eating disorders where an apparently hardwired function of our brain, to be able to generate some sort of reward for resisting a given
Behavior.
Goes too far, and then can actually threaten one's own health, or even life. So, that concept of
allostatic load, allostatic balance and
allostatic function, is something that we get into in a fair amount of detail in the discussion with dr. Feldman, Barrett in that episode, which is coming
out soon. But in the meantime, if you are to think about the interior mid cingulate cortex, as having a single function, the function that dr. Feldman, Barrett has ascribed to it as controlling how much energy different brain and body area
should get in a given context.
Well, that makes a lot of
Me and I think it's the one that best describes all of the functional data.
Indeed includes or jobs
with all the anatomical data about the internment cingulate cortex, as well. One of the really important
twists and all of this is that the anterior mid cingulate. Cortex is not just sitting there to allocate and Dole out different amounts of
energy and activation two different brain areas. It is also
receiving input from both the brain and
body and in sort of a beautiful
twist.
On the whole story of what the anterior mid cingulate cortex? Does we know that when we move our body, we are activating the anterior, mid, cingulate cortex. And we know that when we move our body, because we in some way forced ourselves or encourage ourselves to do
it, we activate the anterior mid, cingulate cortex more.
Similarly and because the enter mid
cingulate, cortex is so flexible in the different context, in which it can be activated.
If we are simply reading or we are
Something to something that we're supposed to learn or trying to learn a piece of music or trying to do anything for that matter, the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex, yes, will be activated.
But that it's levels of activation are far greater when we experience a lot of resistance
that we have to overcome, remember the earlier result.
And by the way, I'll provide a link
in the show notes captions to this particular study or set of studies, they're about to
one really
spectacular one, and a couple of others that
tangentially points the same finding that when people engage in
a
hard task, not an easy task, but a hard, task that the enter amid cingulate. Cortex activity is elevated.
So the way to think about the anterior mid cingulate cortex, is that it's not just sitting there as a hub that you to reach into and activate. It's also receiving inputs
that can activate it
and that's what allows us to now, talk about the tools and protocols. The don't just allow us to engage our interior, mid cingulate cortex
and access more tenacity and willpower.
That allow us to exercise not in necessarily in the context of physical exercise, whether it could be
that too. But to
exercise our anterior. Mid cingulate
cortices ability to engage not just in that challenging context but in other challenging context as well. In
fact, I'll just tell you right now that study is in non-human primates and to a limited extent in humans. But here we think there's a
strong analog between the nonhuman primate data and the human data the
enter mid cingulate cortex is chock-a-block full
Of the expression of molecules such as cam, kinase 2 receptors to various neurotrophins particular types of nmda
and methyl D, aspartate, receptors, all
of which, if none of those names mean anything to, you
just know that all of them,
refer to different aspects of
and a capacity for synaptic
plasticity, which is the ability for Connections in the brain to change. They can get stronger, you can actually grow new Connections. In other words, they enter amid cingulate cortex
can be built up as a
Sure
to engage tenacity will power by activating it through one or a limited number
of different types of behaviors.
Meaning engagement in behaviors that frankly, we would rather not engage in,
as well as
not engaging in behaviors that
reflexively, we
really want to that. We're sort of drawn to engage in both of those
contacts. The I absolutely will. Even though frankly, I don't want to or you're telling me I can't as well as the I absolutely
won't even though you're tempting me to do that or that's
tempting me to do.
That or even I'm tempted to do that. That buildup of the anterior mid cingulate, cortex
has extensive
carry over into other domains of life because it's the same
structure that is then used for other
types of behaviors and learning that require tenacity and willpower.
So that's incredibly reassuring. In fact, it's downright exciting because as I mentioned earlier, while there are a mere infinite number of different
circumstances where we each and all need to NASA T and will power. It seems that there's a
very generic
Mechanism for generating
tenacity willpower. And that means that if we can build up our capacity for tenacity and willpower, by engaging particular types of behaviors and resisting particular types of behaviors. Well, then it's going to
carry over
in a very functional way to the other aspects of life that we
find challenging and that we may find
challenging in the future.
Okay? So by now, I like to think that I've convinced you because
frankly, the data are very
convincing that the anterior, mid cingulate,
cortex is a vital hub.
Thin your brain for
allocating energy and resources to
generating tenacity and willpower. And perhaps it's taken you a lot of tenacity and willpower to get this far through
the episode waiting with bated breath.
Presumably to learn how exactly you can improve the functioning of your anterior, mid cingulate cortex. Now.
Fortunately there are published peer-reviewed
data that explain how to do that. In fact, there's a study that was published in
2006 by colum
and colleagues
entitled aerobic.
Eyes, training increases brain volume in aging humans. And
before you go run off, literally and
engage in cardiovascular
exercise, I'm just going to describe to you the Contour of this study and what specifically was done so that you can best implement the best protocols for your particular circumstances. This was a
study exploring why? And how certain brain areas and brain volume generally
decreases as we age? It's well known as I mentioned earlier that
Visuals aged really 50 and older and maybe as early as
30 and older
experienced a decrease in brain volume with
particular brain areas shrinking faster than others. But of course, there are other people that include the super agers that we talked about earlier and many, many other
people who are not super agers who don't experience the same decrease in brain volume. So why is it that they maintain the same brain size that they did when they were younger or undergo less decrease in brain size? That's what the researchers for this study were
Initially interested in understanding and they did come to some really interesting conclusions about that but they also came to some interesting conclusions that relate to today's discussion on tenacity and willpower.
This study involved, having individuals who were sixty to seventy nine years old divided into one of two groups. One group did
cardiovascular exercise. The other group did more calisthenics / stretching type exercise.
Both groups did one hour of
exercise three times per week.
The group that did
cardiovascular training initially started
off by doing. And by the way, they just simply called it aerobic training, but this could be
rowing on the rower. This could be running. This could be cycling. I
think for sake of understanding application of tools and protocols, you would want to
pick any kind of activity
that you could do consistently without injuring yourself. That's what's really important and that gets your heart rate elevated.
They started off these individuals with relatively low, intensity,
Vascular exercise for that, our getting their heart rate up to about 50% of their maximum heart rate. But very quickly had those individuals increase the intensity of
those cardiovascular training sessions. So they were doing again,
three one-hour sessions per week, getting their heart rate up to
about 75 percent of their maximum heart rate, sometimes a little less 60%, sometimes a little bit more but in that General range.
So for those of you that think about different zones of cardio, this is
probably in the area of Zone 3.
Re not quite Zone
to cardio maybe Zone 3 cardio so where
one can not carry out a conversation very
easily, but where one is not completely gasping for air
as one would if they went to their maximum heart rate or near maximum heart rate,
okay? So three one-hour episodes of cardiovascular training per week at a moderately
high intensity. The other group simply doing calisthenics and stretching for the equivalent amount
of time. And they had another group within the study that were much younger
that
Similar activities or no activity, simply as a control
for the brain Imaging
data. Now I'm summarizing the study with
a fairly broad brush both for sake of time. And of course I'll provide a link to the study in the show. No captions you can access it and proves in more detail if you like. But
I wouldn't be talking about this study. If it were simply a study
about cardiovascular training and brain
volume talking about this study because the specific brain areas that maintained or in some cases
increased in volume as a
consequence of doing.
These three hours per week of moderate, intensity cardiovascular, training included, of
course, the anterior mid cingulate cortex. That was actually the primary location in which the maintenance of brain volume was observed. And in some cases increases in brain volume or observed,
right? This is a group of people who normally would be losing
volume size of their enter, mid cingulate cortex.
But for which three hours a week of moderate-intensity cardiovascular training
maintained,
The volume the size of that interior, mid cingulate cortex. And in some cases, increased the volume, the size of anterior, mid, cingulate
cortex, and they also observed a maintenance or increase in the size of the anterior. White matter tracts.
Remember tra CTS, I didn't spell that out before just to spell it out for fun, although that is the sort of thing that I would probably
do those white matter tracts are the communication routes by which different brain areas communicate and this anterior white matter tracts that
Maintain size in the people that did cardiovascular training
as compared to those that simply did the
calisthenics training and stretching is the very white matter. Tracts, that connects the two sides of the
brain, the frontal lobes that allows
the interim ID cingulate cortex. On one side of the brain in the anteroom, it singlet cortex on the other side of the brain, as well as other brain structures
to communicate with one another. So, this is really
spectacular. I mean, the authors of the study didn't embark on the study to find or even look for
increases or
Ants in the volume of the anterior, mid cingulate cortex and the communication routes in and out of the interim, it cingulate
cortex. It just so happened. That cardiovascular training done three times per
week for an hour at a time. At
modern intensity
increased, the size of the anterior, mid cingulate cortex. And as I mentioned, the
white matter tracts, which allow
information to go in and out of the anterior, mid cingulate
cortex. Now we should all be asking ourselves. Why would that be the case? I mean,
somebody gets on a stationary bike and pedals or goes out on a road bike
or run.
Is there something inherent to running or cycling or rowing or swimming or an aerobics class dancing? Etc? That gets the heart rate up that directly feeds into the interim. It cingulate cortex, after all is the anterior, mid cingulate cortex responsible for generating the activity of running or cycling or swimming. No, rather the interpretation is that in order to engage. In this one hour, three times per week,
set of sessions of cardiovascular training, they had to allocate resources.
Sources. They had to get up out of a chair. They had to get off the couch they had
to say no to
other potential obligations social engagements meals Etc and get to these exercise classes or sessions that they did with others or
alone. Now an interesting and in fact, important aspect of the study is that the compliance with this three hours per week of cardiovascular training
was very high. 85 percent of individuals engaged in these sessions across the six month period of the study. I should have mentioned that earlier the study.
Carried out over the course of six months. They did not have the opportunity to do neuroimaging after say a week or two weeks. So they image these people's brains before, and they image these people's brains after the six-month period, it's anybody's guess as to whether or not, they would have observed, the same, or maybe even greater
increases at the one month, interval, Etc, we simply don't know.
There's a great cost both energetic and financial to doing these kinds of studies. So they looked at
a six-month period but setting all of that aside
this is a very important
Portent study in the context of today's discussion. Because what it means is
that if we acknowledge that the interim ID cingulate
cortex and the volume of an tournament, cingulate cortex
is related to one's ability to generate tenacity and willpower for any number of different Endeavors. Well then having access to a tool or a protocol that can increase the size of one's enter mid cingulate.
Cortex is going to be extremely valuable.
So what's the takeaway from this study the takeaway from this study is not necessarily that you should be doing?
Three one-hour. Bouts of
cardiovascular training per week for six months to maintain or increase the size of your anterior, mid cingulate cortex.
I do think that's the case if you're not
already doing sufficient amounts of cardiovascular training and what constitutes sufficient
amounts. Well, there's General agreement now,
both between the material that I've covered in our foundational Fitness protocol, and in the series, on exercise physiology with dr. Andy Galpin and in various discussions with dr. Peter Atia. The
general agreement is that everyone should be getting
Somewhere between 150 to 200 minutes of so-called Zone to
low-intensity cardiovascular exercise per week.
But the results of this study really points to the idea that we should all be doing
perhaps three hours.
But certainly, we should all be doing some form of physical exercise. But for any of us that are interested in increasing tenacity and willpower
across domains both for cognitive and physical Endeavors, emotional Endeavors to, for that matter,
that we should be engaging in some
Sighs. And again, we're going to talk about cognitive exercise in a moment, but that we should be engaging in some exercise that we are not already doing. Now, that of course, will lead many people think. Wait, I'm already doing 200 minutes per week of Zone to cardio, how can I add 3 hours, more of cardio? That's not what I'm saying. What's important to understand about this whole
discussion about tenacity, and willpower,
is that the ability to engage the enter amid cingulate cortex.
And to build up its volume, literally and increase its activity
relies on.
One critical feature, which is that you have to be, in some degree of resistance, some
lack of Desire, or I should say, lack of reflexive desire or ability to engage in that behavior. Okay,
this is super important. If you're thinking about tools and
protocols to increase your level of tenacity and
willpower. If for instance, you love, cold showers and Ice baths. Well, then it's very unlikely that taking cold showers are getting into an ice bath, is going to
increase your level of tenacity.
Has any
willpower further. It might reinforce the tenacity and willpower that you've already built,
but it's not going to increase it
further. You need to add something or subtract something that makes
it harder not easier to engage in or resist a
behavior. Yeah, I want to be really clear about this in the study that I just
described from colum and colleagues. They
took individuals that were not exercising prior to the
study and those
people had to therefore generate significant amounts of motivation in order to regularly engage in these
three one hour per week episodes.
Of cardiovascular training. Okay, now the fact
that there was no comparable increase in the volume of the enter, mid cingulate cortex,
or anterior, white matter tracts in the group that did the
calisthenics and stretching is also important because it implies that activities
that are easier to carry out that don't get the heart rate elevated. As
much are not going to create changes in this brain structure
that is associated with tenacity and willpower.
And there's a nice confirmation of that in the study, in fact because they
Observed as one would expect a significant increase in VO2, max in the
individuals that were assigned to the group that did cardiovascular training but they did not observe a significant increase in VO2 max in the individuals that did
three one hour per week
sessions of calisthenics and stretching across the six month period, okay? So
the important Point here is, if you're already
doing, let's say an hour a week of moderate to high intensity,
cardiovascular training or resistance, training for that matter, you're going to need to add
Something in order to get further activation
of this brain hub for tenacity and willpower. And of course, the idea here or else we wouldn't be talking about it, is that, that
activation of that, increase in volume in the anteroom, it cingulate cortex would then be applicable to other endeavors, for
instance, academics or some aspect of your professional life for relationship
life that you can build up to NASA and willpower as a capacity within you
where we should say within your anterior, mid cingulate cortices.
But that the route to activating an
increasing, the robustness of your entered, mid cingulate cortex requires
that you engage in something that you don't really want to do and certainly not something
that you're regularly engaging in already.
Remember, way back to the beginning of today's episode, we compared willpower and tenacity to Habit, execution, right? Well, this is a simple case where if you're already doing something simply continuing to do, it might maintain what you've already
got. But it's not going to further build up your tenacity and willpower.
So along those lines. I don't
You to Simply take the 31, our
cardiovascular sessions per week protocol that they use within the study and
expect it to increase your levels of tenacity will power. Unless of course
you're currently only doing one hour of cardiovascular training at moderate to high intensity per week in which case increasing 22 hours may very well increase. Your interior mid cingulate cortex and overall level tenacity and willpower and certainly doing three hours per week would be expected to do it
even further. And I should mention that
We can extrapolate from this study in a meaningful way. I think in a grounded way that's related to mechanism and say, well if you for instance, like me can't play a musical instrument or are not bilingual in language that taking on the
challenge, if indeed, it's a challenge and for me, it would be a challenge perhaps for you, as
well, to learn an instrument, as an adult,
or to learn a second or maybe a third
language if that's challenging. And in fact, that something that you're resisting doing, well, then great, it's
To provide an even greater opportunity to engage the activity of the
Interior mid cingulate
cortex. Remember that study, that showed that
hard task hard challenges are what activate the interim it cingulate cortex, easy challenges, don't, okay, habits that are reflexive, simply do not. So you have to pick
something hard, you have to make something that's either physically and or psychologically hard. And of course, we want to highlight the fact that you never want to engage in
anything physical or cognitive emotional or otherwise that is psychologically or physically damaging to
You right? Because this is something that you're going to want to maintain or carry out for some period of time.
Now along those lines, we could imagine a huge number of different protocols that
one could engage in, but I think there are a
couple of key things that extend across all of those opportunities. First of all, it's clear. Now, based on our understanding of the anatomical, inputs
to the anteroom, it cingulate cortex that while exercise is great and
certainly movement to the body when we don't want.
Of our body.
AKA running AK weightlifting, AK
learning a new skill, like dancing or
gymnastics or something of that. Sort
is going to engage this
hub for tenacity and will power the interim. It cingulate cortex,
but there are a number of other opportunities to do that and we can think of those in a kind of playful context. But one that is both playful
and highly functional and applicable.
So, for instance, if you already
resistant strain, and you're doing what we
now, generally, agree, as
Yield is the minimum of
six hard working sets per muscle group per week in order to maintain or build muscle size and strength. Some of you don't want to build muscle size, but everyone should be trying to maintain muscle strength. There's a very high correlation we now know between muscle
strength and
cognitive function, especially as one gets past 40 years of age, but even younger.
So maintaining neuromuscular function and strength is very, very important. Even if
you don't want to increase muscle size, you can learn how to do that. By the way we zero-cost.
Calls they're all listed out by going to human lab.com. Check out the series that I did with dr. Andy Galpin. Check out the key tool kit. Takeaways from that series also available, Huber and labs.com, just put exercise protocols into the search function.
But let's say you're already resistance training, you're already doing
cardiovascular training, what can you do to build up your tenacity, and willpower for application in, not just that endeavor, but other endeavors,
well, pick something that you don't want to do. These are
what I call in a very non scientific way micro
These things suck but they suck a little bit and they're safe,
right? You have to pick things that are safe for
you, but they suck enough that
they require some effort. They require getting
over some friction engaging in something that you don't reflexively want to do. So, for instance, that might be
one extra set at the end of a round of three to five sets of a given exercise or it could be for
instance, a hundred jumping jacks at the end of what you
consider a hard run. It could be for instance,
Finishing out that language lesson and then deciding to do five minutes of sitting, still thinking about the material that you learned. When you so desperately, want to just jump on your phone right? Pick circumstances, where the degree of resistance is very high where the degree of impulse to do something else than the thing that, you know, you need to do
is very high and then
start applying those on a regular basis. It could be
after every workout, it could be in the middle of the workout. For instance, some people have a really hard time. Not looking
at their phone during a workout.
To listen to podcasts or music during a workout. But I really try and resist text messaging and reading email and things of that sort, while working
out. So the harder that becomes the more, I think about it and the more I resist it, the more presumably
activation of the internment cingulate cortex. I'm getting in that you would get as well. So, these little micro socks. Like, at sucks, not to look at the phone right now. It sucks to do 100 jumping jacks at the end of a run. Of course, if you're excited due to the hundred jumping jacks at the end of The Run, that's
not going to be a good Avenue into
activating and
increasing the volume of your anterior. Mid, cingulate cortex. Everything we've talked about up until now supports the statement, I just made easy, tasks, desirable tasks, don't do it. It's the thing you don't want to do. So
in parting these little micro socks, can be very useful, you'll have to think about what particular micro sucks.
You incorporate into your exercise routines, your cognitive routines in your daily routines and
how often I don't think you need to go completely
berserk on this, doing them all day long,
but keep in mind that these are the sorts of behaviors
and
Resistance of behaviors because again certain micro Sox might be. You know, if you're somebody who practices intermittent fasting, you know, we don't want to send you into the realm of eating disorder but you know, maybe you really
do wait an extra 15 minutes
before your usual first meal time. Which for me would really suck that my even move from Microsoft into macro suck because I like to
eat when I'm hungry but waiting a few extra minutes for no other reason than
allowing oneself to activate that interior mid cingulate cortex circuitry.
Would be one way to try and build up one's tenacity, and
willpower. So, at some level, they should all seem pretty logical. It actually doesn't even
require a firm understanding of the underlying Neuroscience for it to make sense, right? You want to do something to resist, doing it. That's building up to nasty and willpower. You
don't really want to do something. You do it. That's building up to nasty and willpower. Well, I do
believe in fact, there is a lot of data to support the fact that our
understanding of the mechanisms
underneath things like tenacity and
willpower.
Can be very advantageous when trying to
carry out these different types of behaviors to increase tenacity and willpower
why. Well, today, we learn that there's a huge variety of
contexts in which one can activate the enter amid cingulate
cortex, which means that it's not
cardiovascular exercise per
se. It's not resisting the cookie per se, right? It's not waiting 15, more minutes to eat or making sure that you sit still and don't look at your phone at the end of a learning about
And really think about what you learned a little bit more, you know, I really really sucks to do
that. It's really hard creates a lot of agitation it's
not about any one of those
protocols, if you will per se rather it's about
deliberate engagement in the behaviors that we least want to do in a given moment. Or if you're trying to build up
willpower and tenacity to not engage in turn certain types of behaviors,
it's about our ability
to suppress behavioral action.
Now I do want to highlight
Potential hazards of this type of approach to building up to nasty, and willpower and indeed to life. And we can
call on the earlier, example of Eating
Disorders. As a very Salient one right there is a way in
which all of this can run amok
and we can get so heavily into stoicism. We can get so heavily into the idea of building up to nasty and willpower that it takes us into Realms that are unhealthy for us, psychologically, emotionally, and or physically. And that certainly not the goal here, and I certainly don't want to
To motivate that type of behavior or resistance of behavior, we should all be seeking a relationship with life and with goals, Etc, that
involves yes, I believe some degree of
activating tenacity, and willpower really finding that fight within us, that parv easy and colleagues found when they stimulated the anterior, mid cingulate cortex of people, right? All of a sudden they're like, yeah, I'm driving into a storm or there's something
about to happen. I'm going to have to resist. I'm either going to have to do something or resist
doing something but there's something activated inside of me. I think it's very important that we are all able.
To Garner those
resources into activate, those States within us voluntarily. But I also know from experience in from observing others. And indeed, from the literature on the interim, it singlet cortex as it relates to eating disorders and other aspects of neurologic and psychiatric
challenges is that. We also need to learn how to turn that off. With that said, the little micro
sucks that we discussed. You know, the
addition of 100 jumping jacks at the end of a cardiovascular training session when you would
much rather just shower up and go home
getting into the cold.
Shower or cold plunge, when you absolutely
don't want to do it. Well provided you can do it safely. That's going to be the best time to do it. If your goal is to build up to nasty and willpower to say, nothing else of the known, benefits of things, like deliberate cold exposure, and exercise, like jumping jacks, etcetera.
They're also entire Landscapes of life and academics and sport that afford US, the opportunity to build up to nasty, and
willpower. I, for instance, can recall taking my so-called qualifying exams in graduate school where they
ask you questions until you
say, I don't know until you.
Don't know the answer. It's just like that puzzle in the
Baumeister study. They're taking you to the point where
you basically can't win. And
that turns out to be a very important lesson that extends beyond the information that they're asking you about. Of course, every
student at the end of their qualifying exam runs off and figures out the answer to the question that they couldn't get the right answer to sometimes. There is a right answer, sometimes they're not. If the committee is pretty diabolical, they'll give you an impossible to answer question because there's no answer.
But the point being that
whether or not it's in martial arts whether
They're not sin Sports, whether or not to music when they're not
in academics, whether or not sin relating to others. There is some value to getting to that point where you can't solve the puzzle. And I think that's an important message for us to understand and maybe to incorporate into our tools and protocols that there are some Endeavors
that have no end point, right? There's no winning. There's no Finish Line and those type of
Endeavors are extremely important, extremely important for continually building
up our tenacity and
Willpower so much so that we can even take a somewhat 3000-mile
view from the top down onto everything. We've talked about today and think about those super agers
those super agers that somehow are able to maintain the cognitive function of a much younger person. And if you look at the data on super agers and people similar to them, you'll find are always engaged in some activity. That's hard for them. They're always trying to learn something and they have a sort of playfulness about it. But
They seek out those friction points both resistance of certain
behaviors, right? Trying to not do certain things but
perhaps more often doing certain things, learning a new skill learning, Pottery learning music placing themselves into novel environments, that
are a little uncomfortable or a lot of uncomfortable, provided that it's safe.
So, from that standpoint. One could even entertain the idea that because these people are living
much longer than everybody else. In addition to maintaining the cognitive function of much younger
Rules that perhaps the interior mid cingulate cortex in its ability to allocate resources to different parts of our brain and body to meet certain motivational goals
is actually associated with this thing that we call the will to
live. Now, the concept of the will to live, is certainly getting a little bit
squishy for scientists. Like me who? Yes, I'm happy to entertain discussions. That relate to psychological constructs such as tenacity and willpower, but as you've probably noticed,
I'm
very comfortable with and very excited about the idea that, okay, maybe
it's related somehow to brain energetics and glucose. Maybe not certainly. I'm on board, the idea that beliefs impact our physiology and Physiology impacts our beliefs Allah dr. Ali crumb, who was a guest on this podcast previously, talked about belief and mindset effects, which are very powerful. They change our physiology literally, and the dweck data that we talked about today.
But, of course, also that their brain
areas and circuits that underlie these things that we call tenacity and willpower.
We get into a discussion about tenacity
and willpower and then find ourselves as we are now
talking about the will to live. I don't think it's going too far to say that. When one looks at the data on longevity, both physical and
psychological longevity,
it's very clear that there are, underlying physiological, explanations not the
least of which is likely to be the maintenance. If not growth over the lifespan of this anterior, mid cingulate cortex
but also that the people that are achieving that are continually
foraging in their environment, they're continually looking for new environments. They're continually exploring, they are
not becoming complacent. They are not becoming sedentary. They are not existing
down at that end of the
Continuum that we call apathy and depression,
but that they're not existing down there and they are existing up toward the end of the Continuum that we
call tenacity and willpower and engaging motivation to get there. Okay, motivation. Again, as a
verb but in doing that, that they're reinforcing the
Three circuits that give rise to tenacity and willpower. This is what in engineering terms is referred to as a
closed loop. It's like you do a, which leads to be, which
leads to see which feeds back onto a and makes a that
much more likely to occur. It's like
turning the little a into a
capital, A and then turning into a bold-faced
capital, underlined a, the build-up of neural circuits. So while today, we focused a lot on an individual brain area, anterior, mid cingulate cortex. And in many ways I presented it as if it's the be all end, all
Of tenacity and will power. It is not the be-all end-all of tenacity and willpower, it's our ability to engage the anterior, mid cingulate cortex that allows us to express, tenacity and willpower.
But in this closed loop fashion, it's our ability to express tenacity and willpower that then feeds back onto that circuit. And makes it more robust and more
likely to be accessible in the future. When we encounter something that we don't want to do, or that we have to resist very strongly in order to not engage in some sort of
A viewer or thought pattern.
So the big takeaway is that if you want to increase your
tenacity and willpower you absolutely can, you can do that by triggering activation of this
incredible Hub
within the brain. The anteroom it cingulate cortex for which there is. Now, a
very large amount of evidence is that least Central
to the whole process of generating tenacity and will power.
The I absolutely will do that and the no, I absolutely
won't do that. It's the resistance Hub. It's the thing
that's allocating resources.
To do the thing that we don't want to do or that someone's trying to prevent us from doing. It's also the brain area that's allowing us to resist doing the thing that we want to do or that someone else
wants us to do when we decide that's not good for us. We can really be certain based on the
psychology literature based on the Neuroscience literature. And really based on this beautiful literature that's now emerging that includes the colum study but some other studies as well that perhaps we'll talk about
in a future episode
that we really can build up our capacity.
C4 tenacity and willpower, it's a real
thing. And as a final point to this and indeed as a final protocol was very excited to look into the early
release of peer-reviewed papers out from
neuron, just this last week. And to see that there was a study
albeit in a preclinical model in an animal model
that explored, what is called stress relief, as a natural resilience mechanism and I won't go into the study in full detail. Especially not now late into a
slightly long
episodes such as this one. But what
this study showed is that when an animal is in a state of despair or Ada Donia, lack of pleasure when it's under stress, and then that stress is removed, there's a sense of reward. There's a sense of
well-being that accompanies that release of stress and that's pretty obvious. And that's something we've known about for a very long time.
But what's interesting about this study and they actually talked about this in terms of its applicability potentially to humans.
Is that when we are able to withstand a stress,
maybe that stress is school. Maybe that stress is a particular relationship. Again, you never want to do these things in a way that's unhealthy or
dangerous. But when we are able to do that, the relief that we feel afterwards is its own form of reward that serves to reinforce that whole
process of tenacity and willpower that got us through the stressor.
And an interesting thing about this study is that they went on to
compound that reward.
They showed that rewarding one cell for having gotten
Through a stressful episode, actually serves to increase the capacity to get through stressful episodes in the
future. In other words, if you decide to develop certain tools and protocols to increase your levels of tenacity and willpower which frankly I hope that you will at least consider. Again provided you do it safely. This seems like a very good thing to do for all of us especially as we age and guess what, we're all aging from the time were
born.
If you decide to do that, pick something that's challenging overcome that challenge. Again, this could be the requirement to engage in a particular behavior. When you don't want to
or to resist a particular behavior that you would otherwise want to engage
in. But also, when you've
successfully completed that resistance,
when you engage that tenacity
and willpower and you've activated that anterior, mid cingulate cortex,
well, then occasionally not always, but occasionally, providing yourself with a reward of something that you
like and here, it's highly subjective. You'll just have to
Something that you like, again something that's hopefully health-promoting. Not Health diminishing
can serve to further,
reinforce the behavior that you just engaged in which was to increase your tenacity and will power.
And if you listen to the episodes that I've done on dopamine motivation and drive or on dopamine more generally, you will know that. I am not a fan of rewarding oneself for wins or for
engaging tenacity or
willpower for that matter,
on a regular basis or certainly every time this
Is the
sort of thing that just randomly every once in awhile. When you've done the hard thing or view resisted, the thing that was
pulling on you that you should reward yourself but of course, reward yourself in healthy and safe ways. For those of
you that are interested in learning more about how to reward the actions of tenacity and willpower, I'll provide a
link to the recently published paper in Iran in the show. No captions. I will also be doing a toolkit episode that relates to what we cover today as well as some additional tools glean from other papers and research.
Is in the not too distant future.
Thank you for joining me. For today's discussion, all about tenacity and
willpower. We talked about the
idea gleaned from research,
in the field of psychology that tenacity and will
power our limited resources
and that perhaps again, perhaps
they relate to this concept of ego. Depletion, that relates to this idea that what is depleted or what's limited in our ability to engage tenacity and willpower somehow relates to brain energetics
and
Fuel consumption, namely
glucose. I also talked about the conflicting data that argues that if we believe tenacity and willpower are limited and that glucose is the thing that limits them. Well then that's exactly what happens. So I talked about that controversy and some of the data that actually
reconcile a bit of the differences there. So in the absence of new data
you'll have to decide for
yourself what you believe about tenacity and willpower, however,
it's very important to acknowledge the universal truth, which is that our tenacity
Didn't willpower rides on the
tide of autonomic function that is when we are sleep deprived, when we are in pain, when we are in emotional pain, or when we are distracted, our tenacity and will power is diminished which calls upon all of us
to make sure that we're taking care of our autonomic
functions, through viewing morning, sunlight, getting sufficient sleep, adequate
nutrition, social connections, things that have covered
extensively on previous episodes.
Then we talked about the neural underpinnings of tenacity and willpower, and this absolutely incredible brain structure that will.
Call a hub because it's not operating in isolation but rather it's getting input from lots of different brain areas related to reward executive function autonomic function
motor planning goal seeking Etc that we call the anterior mid cingulate cortex. This
phenomenally interesting brain area that seems to be able to generate this thing that
we call tenacity and willpower. And that when we engage
or Express tenacity and willpower by doing the thing that we least want to do.
By not doing the thing that we most want to do in a given moment that we actually can build up our anterior, mid, cingulate cortex and thereby build up. Our
future capacity to engage the interim ID cingulate cortex when we need to call on tenacity and willpower.
And then we talked about some of the peer reviewed data that shows how that actually can be done, where these individuals who were not previously exercising. Did a challenging three one-hour sessions per week of cardiovascular training in.
Did their entertainment, cingulate cortex in the connections
to and away from it increased in a way that set them
apart from their age-related cohorts,
that is their brains stayed younger, maybe even
got younger, whereas those that did not do the hard thing, right? That didn't engage tenacity and willpower did not experience the same
effect. And then we talked about how those data could be extended into a number of different
Realms such as cognitive learning learning languages, learning math, learning art learning
any number of different things.
Or in the Physical Realm, engaging in certain types of exercise.
That one is not already engaging in
adding, in a little bit of additional exercise, specifically, at a time in which you least want to do that, or extending your fasting period.
If that's something that you're doing and that you can do helpfully
simply because it allows you to exercise
your anteroom, it cingulate cortex AKA tenacity and willpower and of course we
highlighted that all of that needs to be done in the
context of psychological and physical
safety.
We don't want anyone to do things that are going to be physically damaging to themselves, but if the one simply takes the stance of, okay, what something that I can do in a moment that will allow me to build up tenacity and willpower. Well, it's going to be the thing that I least want to do in that moment or the thing that I least want to resist doing in that moment to periodically. Add in those
little, what I refer to as micro sucks. A very non-scientific, frankly, non psychological term but I think we all understand what it
means. Little things that we don't want to do, but that if we do them, you can be sure that you are activating the in
Mid cingulate cortex and thereby increasing the
probability, the likelihood that you can access
to NASA, and willpower more readily in the future.
So what I've done today is explain the scientific studies in the realm of Psychology and Neuroscience that explain what tenacity and willpower are and what allows us to build
up our tenacity will power over time
and then it's really up to all of us to you and to me and everybody else to figure out in which particular domains and with which frequency
See, we're going to decide to build up our tenacity and willpower, so it's clear that tenacity and willpower are not just resources that we need
to call upon from time to time in order to overcome things. But then
indeed calling on our ability and building
up our ability for tenacity and willpower can allow
us a much richer enjoyment of
life and perhaps can even extend our life by engaging the will to live.
Thank you for joining me. For today's discussion about the science of tenacity and willpower and
tools and protocols to increase
Ability to access tenacity and willpower
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