Wired for Connection: The Neuroscience of Our Collective Experience

In this episode, Heather and Dr. Ahmad Hariri explore the neuroscience of human connection – how we are wired for both connection and “othering”, what neuroplasticity is, and a consideration of the collective value of neurodiversity. They discuss how understanding this can empower and support us in fostering relationships and personal growth that align with the values & intentions we hold. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions shared in this episode belong solely to the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect those of their employees, clients, or affiliated organizations.

Host: Heather Gates, MPH, Owner & Strategy Partner, Human-Centered Strategy
Guest: Dr. Ahmad Hariri, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University

Resources

1. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky
2. Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day by Ronald Giphart & Mark van Vugt
3. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry by Randolph M. Nesse
4. Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman

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Transcript

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Technical Note: Show notes are created with the help of Riverside.FM AI and thoughtfully reviewed by us. They’re meant to capture the spirit of the conversation, though they may not reflect every word exactly.

Heather Gates 
Hello, this is Heather Gates, and I welcome you to the Stand in the And podcast, where we have honest conversations about the messy complexity of the human experience, where we get stuck, and how we find forward in the and of it all where many things are true at once. This podcast is designed especially for those of us who want to make things more beautiful and better for everyone, and sometimes need reminding that we are human too. I'm so glad you're here.

Ahmad Hariri 
I'm starting Pilates for my core and my posture. 

Heather Gates
How's that going? 

Ahmad Hariri
Very slowly because it's been hard to get a schedule to go there. So I've I've had one session on the reformer. Have you done Pilates? It's the machine. The reformer's the machine. It was good. It was intense. and then at the like the day after, where I felt soreness, it was wild Heather. That was literally like someone had exercised all of the small muscles along my spine. It was very centralized.

Heather Gates 
Interesting.

Ahmad Hariri 
And I I joked with the I don't know what you call the people, the trainer I guess, that hey there you guys may be on to something with this Pilates, you never know.

Heather Gates 
They're like, I think so. Yeah. That's why a lot a lot of people do it.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. So on Wednesday I'm going back for a session where we're gonna use what's called the rebounder. 

Heather Gates 
This just sounds terrifying.

Ahmad Hariri
Yeah, which is basically it's it's a board on the wall and it has eye hooks in it and you attach the springs to these eye hooks and you like you know, you do your I have no idea. That's why I need a trainer to figure out how to do this. 

Heather Gates 
This is what professors are up to in the summer.

Ahmad Hariri 
This is it. This is it. At least old people who are shrinking and are so vain about their height, they're like, I need that quarter inch.

Heather Gates 
You're a very tall person. How tall are you?

Ahmad Hariri 
I am, I am. So it's really silly for me. I'm six four so

Heather Gates 
Do you fit on all of their machines?

Ahmad Hariri 
It's so funny, I do. There were there are adjustments that can be made, at least on the reformer that this this studio has. But the trainer who we're working with, she said that they do have what they call a stretch reformer for guys like Wemby, who are like over seven feet tall. Yeah, really tall. It is indeed. And I'm still within the range of I guess normal, although not technically, but I mean anyway. Well I mean breath,. 

Heather Gates 
So it's available for everyone. Okay.

Heather Gates 
Right, like what got that Okay. Yeah. Well good. Anyway. Anyway, well we'll at least try to breathe.

Ahmad Hariri 
Its really important for the core.

Heather Gates 
I left all that stuff in there. I told you. Uh-huh. See? Here go. All right. And now we have a regimen. Yes. We look forward to an update. Okay. For real this time. Welcome back to the podcast, y'all. As promised, I'm back today at Duke again with my neuroscience bestie, Dr. Ahmad Hariri, to talk more nurdery with you about the and of brains. Thanks for being up to do this again.

Ahmad Hariri 
I am so delighted to be back. Getting the first invitation means a lot, but getting invited back means more. This is a pleasure, Heather. Thank you.

Heather Gates 
We've not done two of these. So I'm also going to be winging it about what we need to say again and what we don't.

Ahmad Hariri 
yeah, we'll both exercise our memory.

Heather Gates 
Okay, perfect. Because I do think for folks who haven't listened to episode one. Right. which we did record primarily around the frame there was around how we're wired for and. Yes. We talked about risk and reward, kind of the fear and pleasure circuitry of an individual. And today I really want us to dig into thinking about the neuroscience of the collective. Almost the kind of neuro-social side of things. But before we do that, if folks haven't listened to episode one, it feels like a brief introduction at least to who you are and what you want to share feels like a helpful start.

Ahmad Hariri 
Of course. So my name is Ahmad Hariri and I am a neuroscientist here at Duke. and so it's good to have you back at Duke again. I know it's not easy

Heather Gates 
I'm wearing Carolina blue just to keep the universe in balance so everyone knows.

Ahmad Hariri 
And so I study the human brain and in particular I and my team use MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, to look at both brain structure and brain function and identify different features of the brain that ultimately we hope will help us understand how two people may be at different levels of risk for developing brain disorders, both of the psychiatric type and also of the neurologic type. So everything from depression and anxiety and even psychosis to Alzheimer's disease and dementia and more quote unquote neurological brain disorders.

Heather Gates 
What got you as a child, did you think I wanna be a neuroscientist one day?

Ahmad Hariri 
No, in fact I'm so jealous of my own undergrads who major in neuroscience. 'Cause certainly, you know, in the Stone Ages when I was an undergrad, that there was no discipline, at least certainly at the undergraduate level. And even at the graduate level, people who studied the brain were embedded in more traditional departments. So in a chemistry department or micro you know, biology, psychology, of course. and then it really became its own discipline, its own field with arms of course in all of these foundational kind of disciplines. But I certainly didn't envision a career studying the brain. I thought about medicine because my dad was a medical doctor and I'm an immigrant. I was born and raised not born and raised, but I was born in Iran.

And like so many immigrant families, becoming a doctor, becoming a lawyer, it's you know, it's the pinnacle of what you can achieve. and my mom is almost over her disappointment at this point with my not becoming a medical doctor while I'm still working on her. Maybe I'll share the podcast with her.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, that'll make her very proud of us both, I'm sure. We'll try that'll make our moms proud today

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly. I think so. So in addition to the research that my group conducts here, I teach classes, undergraduate classes, and in one of those I focus on foundational circuits in the brain that do exactly what you were describing, Heather. They help us identify threat and danger, and in doing so, keep us safe, keep us from harm. And then there are other circuits, a second circuit.

Which overlaps with the first, hence the and of the brain, which really helps us recognize positive things, enjoyable things, pleasurable things, and motivates us to seek out these experiences and these stimuli. So one is to keep us alive for survival, and the other I like to think about is helping us really thrive and maximize our experiences.

Heather Gates 
Survive and thrive. And again, lots more, I think, on those circuits. You talked about the BLA as I recall. Just to show off a little bit. Yes indeed. Yes indeed. But y'all listen back to that one if you want to learn more. I again, I appreciate, I think you do a great job of helping make all of this feel really accessible.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. very good. A plus

Ahmad Hariri 
Thank you. I try. My undergrads helped me figure it out too. Yes indeed.

Heather Gates 
You've got lots of practice. Thank you to everybody who's helped him get here today. Mom included, students included. You know the drill though, before we get into the topic, we're gonna do an and stand. And I went first last time. Yeah. And you already know the thing. So I wonder if you are ready and prepared to go first.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, so now how superficial or deep should this be?

Heather Gates 
That's a you that's a you choice. I can go first.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. Would you please I will maybe on my third visit if there is one I'll go first

Heather Gates 
you'll be ready. Okay. today. Thinking about this, I just drove in today, so I've had some car time. But I think what I've been feeling the past couple days is the and of feeling a little bit unraveled and sturdy. Unraveled in a life transition way. Have a kid going to college in a few weeks. So my life as I know it is changing. doing a lot of thinking, my brain's kind of shaking up some of my beliefs. So, you know, kind of rearranging some things there. And also I don't feel completely like that's the full picture. I also feel a sturdiness and a clarity and a focus about who I am and what I'm up to. I think in particular with work.

and in relationship. So yeah, in ways that life is making me feel a little bit unraveled, I'm also trying to lean in to remember what feels sturdy. Yeah. So I think that's the and that I'm I just notice I'm dancing around in right now.

Ahmad Hariri 
That's okay. That that's that's really, really interesting. That the both the vulnerability but the resilience. And they're again tied together. so playing off of your your and lately I think more and more as as our kids become teenagers, one of them is a teenager, our our son and our daughter is becoming a teenager, I find myself in this place where there's tension to continue to look after them and have expectations of them as children, but also recognizing that they aren't children. They're, you know, young adults in many ways, and to let go. And that is very hard. And I find myself failing again and again in reacting to both of them as if they were small children and not recognizing that they are really, you know, kind of small adults. And I struggle with it. And so that's where I am

Heather Gates 
And I keep getting chills. You've said it twice and I felt it both times. I the the and there for me of holding on and letting go.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. It's so hard. I don't know how to do it.

Heather Gates 
And I think yeah, it's it is a transition and I've found in talking to it's a the and of teenage in particular, where you are a bit sandwiched between little and big. Yeah. Is a tricky and for everybody. Yeah. For the teens and for us and figuring out what our roles are.

Ahmad Hariri 
Honestly, I think it's gonna be more about their pushing back and insisting on new boundaries and new expectations more than my recognizing it and bringing it to them. I'm gonna keep going like they were little kids, right? Needing lots more oversight until they say, you know who Yeah. Out with you. Yeah, yeah. I think I think they're gonna do it regardless.

Heather Gates 
They help you find that an invitation to you then. Keep keep pushing back.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, so just to honor the things that you know, sometimes I think especially when we show up and talk about science and how the brain works and all this, it can feel really separate from the human experience. So I like to continue to ground us in we're all are just people trying to figure it out for the first time. with everybody else on the planet who's trying to figure out for the first time. How to whether it's making a career choice or how to raise a teenager. Yeah, how to be in transition. Yeah. That we're all just figuring it out. So I do I appreciate conversations like the one that we're gonna have that help us, you know, kind of ground some of the things that feel anchoring our given all that we don't know and we're figuring out. Yeah. What has been figured out sure a little bit more lately. Yeah. So I think I shared on the last podcast that

I do have some undergraduate, which was a while ago, background in neuroscience. And that one of the things that's interesting to me is how much has changed and how fast this field, even just peripherally and kind of in culture, what seems like is different. And one of those things, we talked about the amygdala last time, but one of those things that stands out to me again could be that I just was not doing good listening the first go around.

Ahmad Hariri 
Sure that's not.

Heather Gates 
But I do not remember a conversation around neuroplasticity. Right. And in the past many years, I think especially as we think about things like ACEs and resilience. My sense is there's been you mentioned MRI that the technology has just changed, that we understand more about how the brain works now. So and I think neuroplasticity is important. I I know I already said that we're gonna talk about kind of the collective brain today.

But neuro neuroplasticity to me is a little bit of the so what. Even even last time when we talked and we say, I mean, I shared a little about having, you know, an amygdala that's super active or I think there's sometimes it's like, understanding how I am is one thing. Understanding that it is malleable from that understanding points me into a different direction. So the way I think about it, not only does the brain shape our behavior, I think our behavior can also shape our brain. But tell me what's true.

Ahmad Hariri 
100% Yeah. Okay. So so much there to unpack. And I and I love that we have the chance to do so because just from the get-go, I think as part of the greater expansion of the public awareness of how we're studying the brain and what we're learning about the brain, terms like neuroplasticity start to be bandied about very casually. Same with neurodivergence or, you know, neurotypical versus atypical, things like this. And neuroplasticity is even more of a potentially problematic term because it is a foundational principle in studying the nervous system. But that's not necessarily how it's being used. So I'm gonna do like a little spelling bee thing. I wanna just so I can provide what I hope to be the most informative definition, if you will. Will you please use in a sentence? Or you could just tell me outright.

Heather Gates 
So I guess I can tell you what I think it's not. I think I thought your brain is how your brain is. Period. Like you have the connections that you have. No, it's static. It can it can be damaged. Yeah. And then it's damaged. Okay. When I say neuroplasticity now, I am think that means that our connections can change. That…

Ahmad Hariri 
Great.

Heather Gates
If I think of it like what do they say? What fires together, wires together. Like how how my patterned way of thinking, my patterned way of being that can like wear a rut in the dirt road. That it's not just when that dirt road has a rut in it that's how it is. Like there are things, some intentionality that I can it can shift. So it doesn't it's doesn't s have to stay how it is.

Ahmad Hariri 
You got it. Yeah. Yeah.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, that's great. And that's actually much closer to my kind of working definition of neuroplasticity. And that is that it is essentially a term that captures at the level of the brain, of the nervous system, what we would otherwise capture with the with the term learning. All neuroplasticity is in this context is the brain basis of learning. And so the way you were describing neurons that fire together, wire together. That's kind of a basic principle. And it's capturing the strengthening of connections between neurons that are processing information, which has at some point in time yielded some advantage, either something we wanted to happen or something that needed to happen in terms of early development. And so that's in many ways the most pervasive form, and I think I would argue the most important form of neuroplasticity.

The ability to change how neurons in the brain are wired together and how that wiring or circuitry, when we talked about circuitry in the first podcast we did together, that was essentially the foundation of learning about threat or learning about reward. It's through plasticity, neuroplasticity. There is this kind of more extreme version of plasticity that's related to damage or the loss of input. 

So for example, many of us have heard about individuals who lose their sight over some time developing heightened hearing or touch or other senses. And so one of the things we know, and we can actually map with imaging with functional MRI, for example, is that in an individual who's lost vision through some kind of damage to the eyes, or some other means their what was once their visual cortex, so acreage in the brain that have been dedicated to processing vision, begins to process other sensory inputs. So instead of seeing just nothing in this visual cortex of a blind person, you may see that when they hear things, there's not only activity in the areas that in all of our brains are processing sounds, but now in what was the visual cortex, you see processing of sound.

Heather Gates 
Interesting. So and I think that language used of real estate. So place in the brain that we used to grow this, is now growing something.

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly. Yeah. Because again, when vision is lost and that part of the brain is no longer receiving input from the eyes, it's going to start to pick up signals and receive input from other areas. And when that input begins to result in a better ability to distinguish a person's voice or different sounds that mean different things in our environment, that is a basically an input that strengthens those connections.

'Cause they're helping us. And that's a form of plasticity. And what we see is the basically the new found capacity of sound to activate parts of the brain that were previously dedicated to vision, to sight.

Heather Gates 
And in both of those cases, so both in the neuroplasticity as learning. Or is learning. Or the basis of learning. And these other kind of repurposed real estate examples. Input strengthens connections. Same in both. What we're saying is the inputs into our brain. So again, I think this is in part of what where my curiosity comes from is before we're talking about kind of..

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, absolutely.

Heather Gates 
How our brain is working. And what that how that moves from inside to out. Like what's our experience or our behavior as related to that? This to me is kind of putting in reverse the flow to say inputs in strengthen our connections. So when I say behavior shapes brain, not just brain shapes behavior. That's what I'm choosing to consume, either choosing or not, I guess. The inputs that I'm choosing to consume or that I am consuming are shaping the connections in my brain. Period, that is significant just to recognize. It just raises the bar on be careful what you’re consuming Because it is wiring connections to compute, I guess that

Ahmad Hariri 
Right. And and I would add be be careful how you're behaving, because if you start to behave in a in a kind of a habitual way or a stereotypical way, what we see as those behaviors are in fact a reflection of changes that are happening in the brain through plasticity that are making those behaviors more likely to occur and in and in some cases become automatic, become almost reflexive. And that can be really problematic.

Heather Gates 
And though, I think the the sunny side up of all of it is that it's malleable. Right. So I am behaving a certain way. I'm exposed to certain things. And I guess this is where things like growth mindset and other things come from. And we're just talking about the neuroscience of it. But that it's changeable in a way that I think that's when I think neuroplasticity, I think that's at the heart of it for me.  Is that it's not Here's the hardware I have and it's gonna run forever. Right. It is changeable. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, period.

Ahmad Hariri 
It has to be. It's I mean the whole purpose of the brain, as we talked about last time, is really to help you survive, right, and thrive while you're surviving. And to do that, the brain has to learn and it has to be able to update its kind of learning, if you will, based on the most recent experiences that you've had. Otherwise you're gonna continue to repeat behaviors that ultimately are not very successful or beneficial. And you know, that that type of individual or system isn't going to last very long.

Heather Gates 
It's just really it's an empowering I found learning a think learning more about that to feel really empowering. Again, I think I talked some last time about just some of my natural ways of being that felt like they weren't aligned with what how I wanted to be. And so feeling like through learning and practices and other things that that is shiftable over time. Yeah. Feels very hopeful and helpful.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. To me. It it I think one of the things that is important for folks to appreciate is that it's not easy. And it requires effort. Just as..

Heather Gates 
It's not a read a thing today and now it's all different.

Ahmad Hariri 
No, no, no. It requires repetition. whether it's rote or some other form of learning, it doesn't happen quickly. And unfortunately, as we get older, it becomes even harder, right? It's this idea that it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. But it's possible, right? If you're dedicated and you put in the effort, just like when you train your body, right? If you want at you know, at Exactly, right? I wanna improve my core, I wanna improve my posture, I can

Heather Gates 
Just when you're in like when you're in Pilates.

Ahmad Hariri 
physically train my body through exercise. And everyone appreciates that. And it's visible. Hopefully, right? Your work pays off. And you can see improvements. Well, that is exactly what happens in the brain. Just as much as you can train your body. It's just that the end results, the benefits aren't necessarily as obvious to us. They can be much more subtle. And I think they are even harder to

Heather Gates 
You can train your brain.

Ahmad Hariri 
attain than physical you know improvements in our strength or flexibility. It really takes dedicated effort, but it will happen for anyone who has an healthy brain, relatively speaking, you're capable of learning anything that you really make the effort to learn. One of the things that they encourage older adults to do is pick up a second language. Pick up a third language. It's super hard, butif you stick with it, even though you may not become fluent and a native speaker in a in a foreign language, the exercise itself is going to reap major benefits for your general cognitive functioning. 

Because it's engaging all of those pathways, those ruts, if you will, in a new way that, if it's appropriate, will deepen them so they can carry information even better and faster. Or if you

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes, new or you can you can chart new trails. You can absolutely do that.

Heather Gates 
Well, and you mentioned I think an aging brain just then. I do wanna put a pen in. Okay. That I have had probably I'm counting in my head a few folks yeah with curiosity about aging in the brain. Which I think might just number three have to be number three because I really do want us to talk about this other piece. 

Ahmad Hariri 
It's also where our research actually is very firmly rooted for the past ten years. Its all about aging. 

Heather Gates 
You have a lot to say about aging. Okay. Well we'll come back and do aging for people that are curious about that. And I think in particular, I mean, there's a little bit there as you just said, is ways that we can continue to keep those connections, new connections, deepening the ones we want and building new ones. I mean, not you know, just a simple takeaways learning. You know, learning new things. even if it may be challenging. So I gotta bring us back to the topic today. We're gonna run out of problem. Okay. So

Ahmad Hariri 
No problem.

Heather Gates 
Last time we talked about, like I said, the and what how are we wired for and almost this internal conflict sometimes, if you will. I wanna think about the and in this case that is the and between people. Sure, sure. I see all the time and I say that we are wired for connection. Yeah. What do we actually mean when we say that?

Ahmad Hariri 
Okay, let's get into it. Cause it can actually start from a conversation we had the first time we we met. And that was I was describing to you that we are capable of learning about threat, not just through our direct experiences, but by observing others. And even just reading about threats. So that's an it's an it's a pretty remarkable way to learn without directly risking life and limb.

You learn through observation, you learn through instruction. That is all about connecting with other people. So you know, humans learn about human things best from other humans. That's for that's there's no doubt about that in my mind. I don't think there's any doubt about it in anyone's mind. So we have the most to gain and arguably the most to lose in our interactions with each other. So

And I see that again and again in in the brain and in the product of the brain, which is the mind, if you will, if we can create this kind of really false dichotomy, because for me it's all the same. and we we know, for example, that there are specific systems and neurons and circuits in the brain that are sensitive to the actions of others. you may have already heard about mirror neurons.

Heather Gates 
I was hoping we were gonna talk

Ahmad Hariri 
So mirror neurons were discovered in kind of the eighties and nineties by Italian scientists. and they were studying monkeys and monkey behavior and recording their brain activity as monkeys learn new tasks. And what they stumbled upon really, serendipity is such an important driver of discovery, was that the same neurons that they were recording from were active when the monkey either performed a task or simply watched the task being performed, even by the human scientists. 

And so there was this interesting mimicry of sort or mirroring of activity in these neurons. And so in these early experiments, it was about reaching out, for example, and grabbing a treat, a peanut or drinking fruit juice from us using a straw. 

And what they found was that the same neurons that were activated when the monkey actually was grabbing the peanut or drinking the juice were activated when the monkey was observing someone else reach for that peanut or someone else drink the juice. So that was our early window into this mirror system. And since then it's been mapped to different parts of the brain. But generally speaking, these mirror neurons exist to allow us to get a head start on learning. Through observation. 

Heather Gates 
Like there's maybe something else too there though. I mean it's empathy. When I see yeah, when I see you experience something and I feel that. I feel the hurt of that indirectly. There hat there's something about that that is protective. I don't know what else there is, but I keep thinking about the empathy side.

Ahmad Hariri 
Well, I mean, it's such an important driver of bonding, of social bonding, right? And being not only aware of, but in a way motivated by the experience of others. and so we know, for example, in certain studies that empathy or at least our kind of likelihood to help is related to our genetic relatedness. So we're more sensitive to the negative experiences or even positive experiences of our family members and of our closely related biologically kin, but also those with whom we develop strong social bonds over time. So our spouses, our partners, our children. that is all something that is in part built on this mirror neuron system, which is one of many, by the way, in the brain that has this signature of being very much sensitive to what's happening outside of you and specifically what's happening to other people.

Heather Gates 
So what's another one? So if we think about we're wired for connection, what are we talking about? Yeah. When we say wired for connection, we say, Well, we have mirror neurons. What else in the almost like we need each other? 

Ahmad Hariri
Yeah. So another one, and a classic one, if you will, is that there are areas in the brain that that in humans, in most humans, not all humans, and we can talk about where this diverges a little bit, learn to specifically process and recognize faces. And this happens from birth. You know, you're a mom, I'm a dad, and I know that as you know, as soon as your baby is born, they look for you and they they pay attention to your face and they start to learn your face and recognize your face, identity, but also it contributes to learning the expressions and what they mean in terms of your inner experiences. And so there's an area on the bottom of our brain. It seems to be a little bit more active. This is you're gonna love this because it's about asymmetry. It seems to be a little bit more involved in the right hemisphere.

Heather Gates 
I knew it! Thats one point for Team Heather.

Ahmad Hariri 
All right, there we go. There are some specialization. And so Nancy Canwisher, the scientist who did a lot of the early work in the human brain with imaging, began to refer to this area as the fusiform face area or FFA. Now, so what we've learned over time is that in fact, any object or class of objects with which you develop expertise activates the same part of the brain. It just so happens that for humans, a default is to become an expert in recognizing faces. Because there's a lot of information, not only identity.

Heather Gates 
So we have the you're saying we have the hardware. So when I ask how are we wired for connection, you're saying, Well, we have mirror neurons. And they do what you described. We have this space processing region that is the hardware that it's like we're built to recognize each other.

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly. Look for look for information, right? Not just not just, hey, you're Heather, I'm a Ahmad, or you know, you're a you're a relative or you're a stranger, but also what is your experience right now? I think we talked about, I think we did last time about how it's very difficult, if not impossible, to fake an emotional facial expression. Darwin, it goes all the way back to Darwin, who argued that these are honest, honest indicators of your experience.

Heather Gates 
This is why I tell people that I can never get Botox. Because I need all of that forehead animation that I have, y'all would just be confused because I have a very animated face. And it makes it more clear.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, there's some Hollywood actors and actresses who's who have no facial expressions anymore

Heather Gates 
So it does it's interesting when I think about those ways that we may you know, change this. And again, no judgment, do what you want. But this is just me acknowledging how much I notice you know, making a joke about it, but how much I do notice emotion on my full facial expression. Right. What is there? So when I think about belonging and when I think about the need for belonging or the threat.

That comes up with lack of belonging. Is that more sociological or are there brain is there is there a piece of we're wired for connection that falls into all of that too?

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. So again, for me, there's never a real distinction between the behavioral, sociological, psychological, and the biological. They are one and the same. in the sense that they are different features or layers of the same thing. Right. One is biological, one is behavior, so forth.

Heather Gates 
I just wasn't sure maybe from a language standpoint like when I talk about belonging, either being wired for desiring belonging as part of safety, maybe it links back to the safety and threat is just kind of we are a communal species.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, absolutely. We're very social, right? And in fact, I think our survival depends on that extended social human family. You know, you never really hear about a human surviving just on their own, right? We have we have young who are very much dependent on us for a extended prolonged period of time compared to most other animals. So this idea that you know, we don't need each other. I'm not even sure where that would come from. I yeah, it does come. I and I don't know

Heather Gates 
I don't know, but it does come. I think culture right, we have this real sense, I think, here of this independent nature and way of being. And I think as things in are increasingly more technological, I just have a lot of curiosity around our again, like, well, we can't lose this because humans are wired for connection. So, we have we are wired for the capability. Yeah. And a need, I guess, in some way. I don't know how the need translates on the on the safety side. But maybe it's part of just our innate being. I don't know.  So anything you want to say about kind of how connection creates safety or threat?

Ahmad Hariri 
Absolutely. And I would I would I would go even further to say that this kind of highly social nature of humans is present all the way in terms of our down to our genetics, right? So our genetics, our genes, obviously they are the foundation for all of our biology and through our biology, our behavior, when it comes to the brain. And so everything about a human as an as a being is designed for social life, for social experiences. 

There are plenty of animals, right, in nature that live very solitary lives outside of, you know, breeding periods. For so example, most wild cats, except lions, live solitary lives for the most part. Yeah. Yeah, there are some ex there are some exceptions, but usually

Heather Gates 
I didn't know that. fun fact. 

Ahmad Hariri 
individual leopards, for example, or jaguars or lynxes or bobcats, they live solitary lives unless they need to reproduce, right, during breeding seasons. Or rear young. And in that case it's almost always the female of the species. Sorry. Humans really bucked that trend, I think, more than more than most, at least in modern times. We're working on it. So okay.

Heather Gates 
We're working on it.

Ahmad Hariri 
Back to how this kind of social biology, this social makeup, the social brain, if you will, is important for survival. I think it comes down to the inability for any one person to defend themselves from all threat, seek out the important pleasures in life and joys and the needs for survival, like food and water and do that in a way that is somehow also worthwhile, right? Is also satisfying. 

We, for reasons that really we can't ever know, but we can speculate about in terms of evolution and the different forces that have shaped humans as they are today, are all about living in groups, right? In living in social networks. And without those social networks, it's I think it was even more impossible. I imagine I should say that it was even more impossible for our ancestors than it is for us today. Because they didn't have all of the conveniences of modern life, of an industrialized society. They had each other, they had perhaps, if they were lucky, shelter, maybe some primitive tools, and that was it.

Heather Gates 
And I mean when you said it was harder, I think harder in a basic survival way. And I do when I think about the things that you just said, basic safety, protection, food. The modernization of that, where I can right now I don't have to partner with you to I have a farm and you have a hog and together we put together what we need. I mean, many, you know, people do collaborate in that way. 

And we have options that take away some of our drivers for collaboration. And connection in that way. So I think a lot about what does it mean to be wired for connection when it's not really about relational social connection for those same reasons. It's about, you know, health and belong like there's something else. That is more on the thriving side.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, I agree. And certainly I think what we notice now is as we are increasingly coming to a point where we can live completely isolated lives, physically isolated lives, I would argue that we're still not isolating ourselves from social experiences because what do we do on our phones all day? We're all all we want to know is what are other people up to?

Heather Gates 
Yeah. Right. We're still connecting with people. Interesting. Yeah. And maybe it's really expanded our social.

Ahmad Hariri 
In a in a way, but I think it gives us this kind of false impression that we don't need physical interactions and social interactions. That we can we can be okay without it, but what we're finding is higher rates of depression and other, you know, kind of mood disorders as a reflection of pulling away or technology allowing us to live more isolated lives from each other.

And while we superficially feel like, hey, I've got everything I need, I've got food, I've got shelter, I've got entertainment, I have money maybe, what we're starting to learn is that's not enough.

Heather Gates 
And so what from the brain's perspective what does the brain have to do with that? What does the brain have to do with isolation as problematic in some cure from thriving?

Ahmad Hariri 
There there so there one way that I think we can bring this to the to the to the brain and our biology is considering how dopamine, right, which is an important neuromodulator. Mm most people have heard about dopamine as being the the liking drug or the love. Yeah, that's all BS by the way. Dopamine has no direct role in our what we call hedonic experience, in what we find pleasurable.

Heather Gates 
We hear I for sure people talk about even scrolling like dopamine hit. Sure, sure. So that's not a thing?

Ahmad Hariri 
Well, it is a thing, but it's not the thing that people think it is. So though the thing, the pleasure actually comes from opioids. It's the release of our endogenous opioids. yeah, our brain is replete with basically sources of endogenous opioids. 

Heather Gates 
Okay, tell us what the thing is.

Heather Gates 
Endogenous meaning body. We have it already. We have it already. 

Ahmad Hariri
So all the basically the drugs that are opioid related that b that can be abused that are very dangerous are all acting on natural receptors in our brains for the endogenous versions, the natural versions of morphine, of heroin, of opium. Yeah. So

Heather Gates 
What's it called in the body? We don't call it those things.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, they're called opioids. Then they're just call them opioids. Opioids. They're different they're different types of opioids and more importantly, there are many different receptors, different receptors. And they can call they can basically mediate different changes in our brain function and through our brain function and our experiences.

Heather Gates 
Okay, so connect me to endogenous as in we make it already in our body. Chemistry on the inside.

Ahmad Hariri 
It you got it. And so that's right, that's what gives us pleasure. When you feel pleasure, like, my God, that feels so good. That was amazing. That is not dopamine. It never has been and never will be. I mean, I can't say it never will be, but it never has been. But okay, so why dopamine is important is that it serves as a way for us to learn about what things, what actions that we've taken and what things in and around us in our environment led to that opioid hit. It's the opioid hit that we find pleasurable. Dopamine helps us learn….. Oh. The studio just went dark. But only our studio.

Heather Gates 
Yeah. It looks like Here we go. It's been a stormy day in Durham. I thought we were going So it was very possible that we lost power, but I think recording was happening. Okay, so I feel like this maybe is semantic. Yeah, okay. Because you're saying it's not dopamine, it's endogenous opiates. And I think I just heard you say it's more dopamine learning something about opiates. So, it's dopamine's connected. But it's just not.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah.

Ahmad Hariri 
It is connected, but it's only No. And ultimately it's if if you have everything happening in your brain with dopamine, but you prevent the opioid release or the opioid release from binding to those receptors, you will not experience pleasure.

Heather Gates 
Okay, so pleasure. Right. And we can nerd out on the pathway of pleasure maybe some other day. Sure, sure. But either way, how's connection have to do anything with those two things?

Ahmad Hariri 
Fair enough. So the way that I would like everyone to think about dopamine and how I teach my students is that dopamine is about wanting. It makes you want something. Okay. And it motivates you to pursue things that you want. And so for that reason it's very important. And then liking it is about opioids. So the so putting that aside, what we know is that there are changes in dopamine signaling and downstream so wanting and liking through opioids that happen in you know in response to social interactions and opportunities for social engagement that look just like they do when it's about food or water or even sex. So that's where the connection

Heather Gates 
Say we're wired for connection. We're wired for connection at or I don't know if that feels like wired. I mean, when I start talking about chemicals and receptors. But it's kind of just the same way it as our other it's a basic need almost. We it's wired as a basic need.

Ahmad Hariri 
The fact that s interacting with another person, right? Or even just seeing another person is associated with this dopamine signal tells me that it's just as important as the food that creates essentially a like if I recorded from these circuits and just showed you the recordings, I wouldn't necessarily know that this is in response to food, this is in response to sex, and this is in response to getting a nice note from a friend. 

There was a cool imaging study, functional imaging study done, Heather, where they had basically partners in scanners at the same time. So you put one person in scanner number one, you put the other person in scanner number two, and you collect functional imaging data as they were both sending and receiving love notes from each other. Really, really kind of a cool study. And what they found was, well, a number of things. The pattern of activation was indistinguishable essentially from the pattern that would be associated with a hungry person eating something delicious, drinking a milkshake or eating a burger, or a thirsty person getting a that much needed drink of water, or a smoker who's been abstinent for 24 hours getting a cigarette. Those signals are again virtually indistinguishable from each other in the brain.

And involve the same neurochemical pathways like dopamine and opioids and the same brain circuits. So it's all converging on the same underlying brain circuitry and foundations. And so I mean, to me, that's pretty compelling evidence that being social is not something that we can do or not do. It's optional. No, it's as much important for our survival as food, water, and sex.

Heather Gates 
Yeah. And so there's the why we need it. So we've talked about connection from a why we need it. We're wired this way. We have mere neurons. you know, just even from babies we need each other. Yeah. And then we have to figure it out even if we can door dash our food. In a lot of the space that I'm occupying on a daily basis, we need each other because we need each other's perspectives to solve problems.

Ahmad Hariri 
Absolutely.

Heather Gates 
So it's collaboration, not necessarily because it's a basic human need. Yeah. And connection and belonging a basic human need. Right. But it's we gotta work together to figure some things out.

Ahmad Hariri 
Absolutely. And if we don't have the intrinsic, and I don't often use intrinsic or innate, but I think in this case it's warranted. If we don't have the intrinsic or innate drive to seek out others, how do we ever make the connections that are important for, you know, getting anywhere, doing anything? as part of this whole two hundred and fiftieth birthday of our country, I was reading an article about the building of the Statue of Liberty and how it involved ultimately a sculptor who had their own way of doing things and building things, connecting with an engineer who turned out to be Eiffel, by the way, who then later made the Eiffel Tower, figuring out how do you get this giant statue up and staying there. And but if one didn't feel the need to seek out another.

Heather Gates 
Fancy, more fun fact.

Ahmad Hariri 
Sometimes incidentally, by the way. It's not necessarily that the guy who designed the Statue of Liberty put out an ad in the paper saying, I need an engineer to figure out how to make this thing stand.

Heather Gates 
Not like me shopping for a neuroscientist on the internet.

Ahmad Hariri 
Maybe he did. I don't know. I didn't read the stories that carefully. But ultimately I think it's this intrinsic or innate drive to connect that allows us to solve the biggest problems that are facing us today and historically.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, and sometimes we have a hard time connecting to each other.

Ahmad Hariri 
Sure, sure. Some connections end up being disastrous.

Heather Gates 
Well, and so my curiosity and I feel like I could weave together some assumptions from episode one into this one. Okay. Is when I think about if we are wired for connection. Yeah. So we're built to have empathy, to work together to solve problems. So with that 'cause sometimes we talked last time about sometimes our base hardware running is something to interrupt, not lean into.

In this case, I feel like it's our innate way is collective. And there are things that get in the way of that innate way. And if that's we have learned some fear. We have right. you said we are more connected to those that we have relationship and experience with. So if You know, that's another one where our behavior shapes our brain. If we're not seeking new connections, then we don't they don't feel safe. I guess I'm just I'm curious what we know about how the brain works. If there's anything that would help us. I don't know. It feels like at least I don't see it as much close up. In the work that I do, I people are coming together Often around a shared problem, like you were just saying. And there's the how do we work together to figure it out?

Ahmad Hariri 
Understanding is already there that we need each other.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, there's a basic understanding. When I feel the air and energy around me, and maybe it's not true, maybe it's just being projected to be true. There's an air of we're losing some of that. Yeah. And I don't I don't know if that's more fear response related or if there's something else just to leave with us that remember your brain does this. 

You know, it's we're sensitive to actions. We need to learn to be updated. And maybe, you know, I don't know what if there's not a willingness to connect, I don't know what the path is, given what we've just said, that learning shapes our response. And if you have a response that pushes you away from what feels to me like our natural way of being is connection. But there is also this, you know, kind of othering.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes, exactly.

Heather Gates 
I'll just stop there and see what comes up for you. Like what can the brain help us do if I am passionate about that we can do better together? We can do better for each other and with each other. Yeah. And it seems like we're stuck sometimes.

Ahmad Hariri 
Well one of the things we talked about last time, Heather, is that that if that these two foundational systems, the threat and the reward, the keeping bad things from happening and making good things happen, if they come into conflict which they do constantly, the default is for the keep bad things from happening to win out. And boy, are we in the middle of a time in our species history where.. 

Where that seems to unfortunately be the default. Right. And so it and this is all about plasticity. Plasticity doesn't isn't by default good. It's learning. You can learn lots of bad things. And last time we also talked about how there is the amygdala, one of our favorite structures, is it is very sensitive to what we can what sometimes psychologists call in-group out group. Right. And so…

Our brains evolved, and we talked about this as well. when we were we were social, but not social in the way we are today. Social in that maybe we lived in a tribe of ten or fifteen people, but they all looked like us. They all came from the same place, and we likely more than more than not Yeah. But now we have these increasingly diverse, extended

Heather Gates 
Related. Yeah.

Ahmad Hariri 
multicultural, multiracial, multi-ethnic groups, huge groups that we live in, or that we learn about. And in that case, the default, as far as we know, of the brain is to react to the outgroup, the person who's different from you, as a threat.

Heather Gates 
So that's I just want to slow it down because we've just said we're wired for connection. And we are wired for in group out group thinking. Exactly as it relates to safety. Right.

Ahmad Hariri 
I would say in terms of like our base operating system or hard really, but I would say it's more it's software than hardware because you can change the patterns, right? Yes, exactly, through neuroplasticity. But the default based on the brains that are inside of our skulls, but evolved 250,000 years ago was that the chances of you seeing running into a person, another human that didn't look like you was low. Right. And when you did, it was better to assume that this stranger may not have stranger danger. And so to react with fear. I mean, I can argue and I think most of us would appreciate that in that context, that's adaptive. That keeps you from, you know, being murdered or being killed or being who knows what, right? But in our modern world, it's not that's not what happens anymore.

Heather Gates 
It's maladaptive

Ahmad Hariri 
And so simply exposing your a person to a different ethnic or racial or cultural group, we find has a huge effect on the this amygdala response that drives fear. So, if we look at pictures, and this is work that's been done with FMRI, if we look at pictures of people from different racial groups, right?

I could be a White person looking at the picture of a Black person or Asian person or Hispanic. There is a higher amygdala response to those outgroup pictures than to other white people.

Heather Gates 
Just based on how your brain baseline

Ahmad Hariri 
Based on that that person, what the amygdala sees in that person is different enough to trigger this threat response because you don't know. Now, you show them pictures of familiar people from those same groups, right, that you may know from sports or entertainment or who knows what, then that amygdala response is no longer higher. It's exactly the same as you would see for other white people.

And it's really as simple as just big just allowing yourself to become familiar with someone who's different than you. That can result in plasticity that ultimately is associated with reduced threat. And when you have reduced threat, now you have the opportunity to now create some important positive bonds. Does that make sense?

Heather Gates 
Yes. And because I'm always interested, like I said, in how we l when like why does any of this matter? Yeah. Why does this conversation matter? Why are we talking about the brain as it relates to the and of things? Because I think it's very important to understand how our base, especially innate ways of wiring. That maybe used to be helpful. I don't Or a full you know, a very long time ago. Are not serving anymore. And why we brought neuroplasticity into this and talk about things like we have to learn it to update it. And practice it is this yeah, there's so much agency that we have over how we relate to each other.

And when we remember that we are built even though right, we're wired for in group, out group, if  that's what you're saying. from a primitive level, we're also not operating every day from our primitive animal brain. Like in every other example Right, we are using this more advanced frontal lobe thinking brain. 

To help us bring all the things together. And again, Q episode one. but to navigate the complexity around us and to act in service to the values of what we actually want. So just this it feels like just putting another fine point on not s like of mindful brain ownership. In some way. Mindful humaning. To say that these things that you think or you may not even be thinking, but some of your these reactivities to be mindful and aware of those and it takes intention to shift. 

Ahmad Hariri 
Very much so. And that you know, there's so many actors in our world today that are very eager to capitalize on the base, the intrinsic, the reflexive aspects of our nature and of our brains. In other words, they wanna continue to incubate and fuel the fear.

Heather Gates 
Or strengthen, right, back to the neuroscience of it. When you said earlier, the input strengthens the connections. We can make those ruts deeper. Actually. Or we can shift them.. But it takes intention. To shift them.

Ahmad Hariri 
Absolutely.

Ahmad Hariri 
And awareness, right? So you may be you know, passively listening to the news and you're hearing story after story about, you know, this group is causing harm or that person is causing harm. And again, going back to this can actually fundamentally alter the way the amygdala, which is a deep ancient structure, it can actually alter through learning, top down learning, how strongly the amygdala is gonna now respond to those individuals or those groups. If you're not aware, if you're not aware that, hey, this is a bias that is

Heather Gates 
I'm training a bias into my core biology.

Ahmad Hariri 
You gotta you're creating a bias at the level of your brain circuitry. That's easier to unfortunately like most habits, they're easier to develop than to break.

Heather Gates 
And it's yeah, it was it was an important reminder to me in our last episode where, you know, kind of when I think of bottom up and top down, I'm talking about the elevator going up, like amygdala going up to thinking brain. and also though that the thinking brain can upregulate negative like you got challenging

Ahmad Hariri 
That’s right.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, just the awareness. And maybe that's why this feels so important for me to keep talking about with you. Yeah. is I don't think we all as a collective understand really what's happening in us. And the more we do, the more I think you're like, okay. It puts me in the driver's seat, I feel like, in a different way. In an in a in a less judgmental, like accept this is how this is and why and the responsibility then to if input strengthens the connections right the what are the yeah exactly what are the inputs and how do I make sure that I'm inputting what is aligned with how I want to be and

Ahmad Hariri 
And becoming aware that input is not any one type or one thing.

Heather Gates 
Inputs being a conversation and what you're consuming visually and audibly. 

Ahmad Hariri 
A passing remark on TV could have a big effect on these pathways.

Heather Gates 
All the all the inputs. All the inputs. And just this call and you know, it's  probably larger than a brain conversation, but I just I wanna remind us that we need each other. And it takes some effort sometimes to help absolutely figure out how to make that how to make that happen. 

Ahmad Hariri 
You know you never know where the important help is going to come from, right?

Heather Gates 
Well, and speaking of that, you know, I think we've talked a bit about diversity without naming diversity explicitly in this. Last time, I don't remember actually whether it was in the podcast or in the hallway. But I know that you have some thoughts about diversity from a neurodiversity standpoint. And you just said earlier in this episode that kind of like neuroplasticity, that word means a lot of things to a lot of people. What does it mean to you? How does it relate to what we're talking about around this kind of collective experience?

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. So for me, and I think it's most helpful to take us back two hundred and fifty thousand years, let's say, where we have our ancestors in small groups. Why would we want individuals within those groups to have very distinctive kind of behaviors and personalities and characteristics and quirks even, if you will. Why? Why would why would we want that?

So we're speculating, of course. Stephen Jay Gould, I don't know if you've ever read any he was a famous anthropologist and the evolutionary scientists, and he very sternly criticized other scientists for telling what he called just so stories. So we see something today and we create a story for why that is. And and he was right. We do this far too casually and far too storytelling willingly. We are storytellers, you got it. But but I think there's room for this type of storytelling. 

So in our modern context, neurodiversity, at least for me, in part captures individuals who show different levels of impulsivity or compulsivity or anxiety, even a proclivity to experience low mood like depression. Why is it that there is this range of emotional experience and behavior in humans today?

Well, so one argument that can be made is that those types of behaviors and variability in those behaviors actually serve some advantage to our ancestors and to the groups that they lived in and needed to survive. So each individual needs the group to survive. So let's take ADHD, which is the diagnostic label for individuals who tend to have less capacity for kind of long periods of focus and tend to shift their attention from object to object, thing to thing much more quickly than others. 

That's kind of a core part hyperactivity as well is part of ADHD typically, but it's really more often than not the impulsive behaviors, doing things without really thinking about them, and the inattentiveness, constantly kind of shifting your attention. So in a group, I could tell a story, I'll tell a story where a few individuals with this type of characteristic of being relatively inattentive and more impulsive actually help the group as a whole because they're going to notice something that changes much more readily than the other people in the group. They're all they also may be more likely to act impulsively in response to something new. 

Heather Gates 
May help keep the rest of us safe.

Ahmad Hariri 
Or it could be the next opportunity or a new food source, a new of shelter. Hey, you know actually I don't know why. I just went over that hill today. I know where I was supposed to and nobody does it, but yeah, I just did it. I felt like I and you know what's on the other side of that? Beautiful fruit trees. Yeah. And a running a spring. And my goodness, if it wasn't for my impulsivity for not we would have never have found it. Okay, so you have that person.

Ahmad Hariri 
But you also need to balance that, right? You need to balance that with the person who's constantly worried about the next threat, right? And is actually l much less likely to go over that hill because they're worried about the tiger or the lion or whatever predator. 

Heather Gates 
I think that's me. But I wanna be over the hill, so I'm trying to figure out how to do all the things. I think my natural wiring would be I would be the scared of everything.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, and if we think about our lives as being all about social connections and groups, you don't need to be necessary.

Heather Gates 
Which is interesting. And I've had this conversation of like, no, you need to be you because you're gonna always move the flag and set the vision and then I'm gonna come in and think about how to make it work. And that it really does if we can let go of some of that a leader looks like this, I should be this way. This is what success looks like or some yeah, kind of naming of it that feels yeah.

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly.

Ahmad Hariri 
And I and I think Henry this is a side effect of sorts of our increasingly isolated lives. Right. So we don't we don't see e enough of each other and certainly in the contexts that are that are kind of the most revealing, where we can stop and say, Wow, I think it's really cool that, you know, this person is much more impulsive than I am. Like they're gonna do stuff that I would never do. I'd be scared to death to do.

Well, I'm also helping keep that person from doing something that's totally, you know, reckless and dangerous because my anxiety is bad. It's all about kind of at the group level. It's about establishing a type of balance, which it at the in the individual brain we talked about last time, you have threat, you have reward and then you have the executor that sits on top and says, Okay, now's the right time to pursue something that makes you feel good. Now's not the right time. Let's be more aware and sensitive to the danger and protect ourselves. This can happen at the group level too.

Heather Gates 
Yeah. So this balancing out of the and of things that is within us and among us. And it's tricky. I'll name this one, you know, I think the various brains wirings. And I don't even know I'm  cautious because I don't even I don't know the right I don't know how to say it. Right. I say I tend to just say, Well, I'm wired this way. like labels off labels off.

Heather Gates (
Yeah. I'm wired this way, my spouse is wired this way. It means as a team exact helpful because somebody's taking more action and somebody's making a plan. Experientially, it can drive us crazy. When I need this and you need something different, or your natural ways of being poke on my natural ways of being. 

You know, you're very active and tappy around and things and I'm very sensory sensitive. Like Yeah. It's so it just went it's a very Andy to me. It is in that I can see the net benefit of it in the month. It just it's something to figure 'cause I can feel in myself what it feels like, even from a neuro-sensitivity standpoint, to be with other people who are wired more like me. 

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. But in the moment

Heather Gates 
Who understand my experience when I say that I'm I want to just I cannot handle the tapping of the pen right, some of these sound sensitivities that I have to be with somebody, it feels resonant to me to be understood in my experience. And I see the benefit, I understand what you're saying around there is value in us all being different. And I just want to name that at least interpersonally, it can be challenging. I suspect this comes up in teams. And certainly we see it in in the collective. And maybe there's, you know, a point to be made there is that it might feel tricky. Because it's we're wired more for same. But the net benefit to our collective

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly.

Heather Gates 
thing that we're doing here as a as a species, as an ecosystem, is strengthened by the diversity that we bring. We can see problems differently. We can see opportunities differently. We can support and serve differently. 

Ahmad Hariri 
And it's I think you know, to use your very nice kind of analogy of sorts, if you can pause and then just even try to understand what's happening from a different perspective, a more long term perspective, or from just an outsider's perspective. You know, are things really as bad as I feel they are?

Heather Gates 
Yeah.

Heather Gates 
Is he really trying to piss me off right now with the bug with the TV?

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes, yes, yes, yes, for sure. For sure. but I absolutely appreciate and what you say resonates with me about how difficult it can be when you are interacting with someone who is really different than you. It's very hard to appreciate those differences and recognize how, well, you know, on a grand scale, those are the very differences that have been helpful and in fact critical for our thriving and surviving as a species. They're really core. 

And I think that's why they are there. They don't, they're not going away. If anything, I think we've become more attuned to these differences between people. and so it's resulted in terms of the clinical and medical side of things in in higher levels of diagnoses of ADHD and perhaps treatment. but that doesn't mean that it it's not there. It's not real and it did it and that it can't benefit us collectively. It's just not the way we think anymore. It's this, as you were saying, as a collective, it's as individuals. And I don't know enough about this. I've colleagues who study different cultural styles, if you will, individualistic versus collectivistic. and I think it'd be really interesting to do a deep dive in how within those two different types and larger cultural contexts, individuals see these differences. 

Right? Are they less kind of alienating and odd and atypical and abnormal in a collectivistic culture versus an individualistic culture? Cause  I mean, at least my rudimentary understanding is in one, you don't really think that much about why are you so different than I am, but rather how can I be more like the group? How can I contribute to the overall well being? 

Heather Gates 
Just that question of not I'm weird. And whatever air quote normal is the goal, which is just problematic from every standpoint in my opinion, because certainly our culture has set that to be a certain thing. but more the curiosity around how can I contribute?

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. Right. How can a how is everyone able to contribute?

Heather Gates 
Right. How do I can treat how can I honor how I am? Yes. Now, again, I may have natural tendencies that I'm trying to do some inputs to strengthen and be right, shift that. And given the uniqueness and I it feels better to me. I know, right? diagnosis and other things are helpful in certain contexts, but I increasingly am just thinking about

Ahmad Hariri 
Spectrum. 

Heather Gates 
Everybody's brain's a little different. Yes. Right? Yes. And and I don't know exactly where you would put me on whatever chart, but I just increasingly feel like I have a sense of how my how I'm wired. Yeah. So often I'm just like, Well, I'm wired that that that I'm sensitive to sound, or I'm wired that I have a really active fear response. So call it what you want to. But just the more I understand about my wiring, here's where I'm gonna be more helpful, here's where I'm not. Like just kinda honoring 

Here's how I'm wired. And the more we understand that, the more I think we can contribute, the more we can be supported. The more we understand we're on a team, we're gonna need some more lift to go probably gonna need somebody that's not me, you know, do an XYZ because I get stuck in those yeah in those ways. So I think the more we cannot pathologize which is everything right. pathologize everything that I don't even know what the n what normal

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes. Which is far too common. 

Heather Gates 
brain means. I mean, we've talked about some basic here's how the brain structures are and here's how responses is, but even with within that, yeah, all the ways that you've talked about it gets shaped. We know that everybody's gonna be wired in some different way, innately a little bit. Or sensitive in different ways, innately a little bit, and then everything we're experiencing changes that. Everything shapes us and we shape everything out. 

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes. It's a two way street.

Ahmad Hariri 
It's a two way street. Yeah. And then we know, you know, you I think you were very generous at the beginning to describe all that we've learned about the brain. But one of the things we talked about last time is that what we've really learned is how a brain works. What we are very far from understanding is how two different brains work differently.

Heather Gates 
Mm.

Ahmad Hariri 
We are only scratching the surface. And that's you know, that's been the bread and butter of our work. It's individual differences. You know, what is it about a brain?

Heather Gates 
So even when I say we're wired differently, like what does that actually mean? We're not exactly sure.

Ahmad Hariri 
We don't know. In fact, we're only in the last few years do we have what are effectively the parallel of growth charts for brain structure and the size of different structures in the brain. So it's only I mean

Heather Gates 
Interesting. Right. So you may be able to tell me soon you may be able to help me better understand how my brain is unique.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, well it's true. I mean, I think y it's absolutely unique, as is every

Heather Gates 
everyone. Well, but like how so? Yeah, exactly. Right now it's more just experientially we understand that. Or through our behaviors and what's adaptive or challenging for us. That's how we're figuring it out.

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly. Yeah, or in terms of our scientific approach, we're comparing relative differences. Right. So in a group of people who I can observe or who report higher levels of anxiety compared to a group that reports lower levels of levels of anxiety, I see, you know, a larger amygdala in the group with anxiety. It's all relative, right? What does it mean to have a low? What if your brain is overall bigger? 

You'll have a larger amygdala might not have have anything to do with your level of anxiety. So these norms, these population reference norms, just like BMI or height and weight, you know, as our kids are growing, your doctor, the pediatrician says, you know, you're right, you're right on the curve. You're doing okay. We are only now creating those for the brain across the lifespan.

Heather Gates 
Well and we'll have to be careful now. I mean, some of those are problematic in important ways too. So we gotta be careful what we for sure how we make the charts.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, we wanna be able to leverage that kind of normative reference in order to be able to with some confidence communicate that someone, for example, has a brain or has a hippocampus, the part of the brain that's really important for forming new memories and recalling old memories that is smaller for their age and biological sex than you would expect, than you would see. So I'm a fifty four year old man.

Heather Gates 
What do with that. I mean if you have a brain structure that's smaller and you can't change that like…

Ahmad Hariri 
So and I'm cheating, I'm hedging towards our next podcast. One of the things Okay, if you're a fifty-four-year-old and let's say your hippocampus is in the twenty-fifth percentile of all fifty-four year old men, that is a red flag in that your hippocampus is much smaller than you would otherwise expect for your age. And that in and of itself, it can't today, but not in the far future be one more piece of information that your physician can use to say, hey, you're at increased risk for dementia. 

Your likelihood of developing dementia is X times greater than someone who had a hippocampus that was in the 50th percentile or in the ninety-fifth percentile.

Heather Gates 
And I don't think I want you to tell me that unless there's something I can do about it.

Ahmad Hariri 
Fair point. So is it just motivational or is it actionable?

Heather Gates 
Like I my in my master's work I studied public health genomics. And so getting into even ethics conversations then to go, what's really just 'cause we can can know, what's really actually that helpful? And again, with my active Amy, I'm like, she can have TMI. Right. If I don't need one more thing just to be worried about. Yeah.

But if it's something, you know, like we're talking about today is input strengthens connections. If this is if I desire this, these are the things I wanna make sure that I'm exposing myself to to reinforce Right, the the wiring that I want to have. That feels pa I feel my agency in that.. It feels trick some of this stuff gets tricky sometimes when it's just more information that It's not actionable. Not much I can do about it. so that's that's a challenging place that you

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, and that remains I think probably the biggest challenge that we have to meet is now that we have this information, what do we do with so what? Right? And sometimes you know, it can be self defeatist. It could they you could create a self-fulfilling prophecy if you report to someone that, hey, your hippocampus is you know, seventy five percent of the population, your age has a hippocampus that's bigger. Like, well, I guess my memory sucks.

Heather Gates 
Right, right, right. If it's not try learn new because if that's not where neuroplasticity comes in, if that's more just brain structure and it is what it is. 

Ahmad Hariri 
So there is a fine line and you know from your work in genomics about what is going to be useful in helping improve the well-being of someone and what's something that's ultimately gonna undermine their health and well-being. And that's the you know, that's I feel and I but I feel like we're not even there yet. We have to have the measures locked down first before we can then say, okay, what do we do with that? 

Heather
And this is just me from a regular person to the scientist saying. Before you start telling me that, well make sure you also do the what here's what you can do about it part of the research.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. Well and we have a lot to learn from genetics and genomics, right? To help people make the decision that ultimately may reveal that, hey, they have the Huntington's BP or that they have a genetic mutation that's gonna result in early hunts and Alzheimer's. It's not of you know, it's not just all information is helpful. It can be helpful or hurtful.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, these are tricky, tricky things. And I mean, I think you've information can be helpful or hurtful. Yeah. Applies to a lot of what got shared today. Information back to the very beginning of our conversation around neuroplasticity as really learning. Is what are we exposing our brains to help it learn?

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah. And I would just add that so much of the learning that we've talked about and the plastic the plasticity in the brain and between neurons within these circuits is implicit. It just it happens. It happens because our brains are constantly processing information and you never know when a particular bit of information is going to be tied to something emotional or somehow more dramatic, more and it'll get it'll become a stronger pathway connection.

Heather Gates 
Cause when you said implicit, I think my brain went to inherited, and that's not what you mean. Implicit meaning it's happening without your passive in a passive way. Just as you're going about your life, your brain is taking in information. Whether you're sitting down with a book to say, let me understand people that are this, you know, have this experience. Your brain's constantly a sponge. It requires no effort on on your part.

Ahmad Hariri 
and maybe to kinda end with our old friend Amy. Yeah. Right. So you know when Amy is is upset.

Heather Gates 
Amy is the name for my amygdala. Right, sorry, yes. Yes.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes. You know when your amygdala is has detected the threat and is now creating the experience of fear. Right. You know that. I do but you have no idea when it's learning all these things. You're not aware of it.

Heather Gates 
I'm not necessarily sure what got it hyped up. Sometimes I'm like, I think I know.

Ahmad Hariri 
But it is constantly receiving information.

Heather Gates 
It might she might be picking up that's fascinating. Because I think I think when you just said what you said about picking the kids up from school, that's what got set me off. But really Amy has been gathering data on a bunch of other things that contributed.

Ahmad Hariri 
For sure. And you don't know until all of a sudden you're having this fear response or you feel anger or you feel somehow irritable. And you're like, why is the why is this? And sometimes we don't know. a clinical example is you know, people can develop phobia. So really dysfunctional, disabling levels of fear. More often than not, they don't they can't say, it was because I was bitten by a dog right when I was three years old that I'm afraid of dogs now. Some people can lot of phobias can't be at least consciously connected to some negative experience, although everything we understand about the brain and the amygdala leads us to think that that there was something.

Heather Gates 
Yeah. You're gradually being exposed to it somehow.

Ahmad Hariri 
It could be gradual or it could be something that you don't have conscious event. Exactly. Exactly. But the you know, there are circuits in the brain, not just in the amygdala, that are forming these associations, that are making these connections. And down the road, they can shape your behavior.

Heather Gates 
And we can our behavior can change it. I think that's really an important so as I just, you know, run my highlighter back through the notes. from today, that we can our brain shapes what we do, we are wired for connection with each other. And there is some base model that is naturally in group out group.

And whatever that means, right? If it's like practice versus science. Staff versus leadership. My family versus your family. Country. My team. My blue, your blue. Like there's some wiring in there about that. And this I think the invitation is to be is Just mindful, like awareness of what's happening. And then I just keep I have circled so many times. Input strengthens connections. Good connections in our brains. Right. Input strengthens connections. That part is neutral. Neutral. Be aware that that's true. And be choosy about how you're training your brain.

Ahmad Hariri 
For good or bad.

Ahmad Hariri 
Exactly. Yeah, and and not just be conscious and choosy, but be aware of when you're being exposed to things that are creating a bias through these learning pathways, through input and strengthening of connections that down the road may shape your behavior in a way that you don't want. You know? That's harder, right? Because it's so much of this is insidious. It's kind of hard to know until

you're experiencing it. Like, why am I upset by all this? Or why am I feeling afraid in this situation? I don't have any reason. I can't consciously think of anything. But if we had a way to rewind, I'm sure we could identify biases that we were we were exposed to that have created these learned pathways that and you're now seeing expressed.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, I just I mean part of it to me is kind of be intentional about where you put yourself. You got it. Right how much environment shapes us.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, and especially our kids, right? from good and bad. I, you know, Anna and my wife and I are very, very pro-public schools, much more because of the social experiences that our kids receive there and the other kids they meet and get to know and become familiar with the cultures, more so than the academics, because implicitly they're developing familiarity with lots of different people, especially people who are not like them.

And ultimately we hope and we have reasons to believe that they will become adults who are not as biased, not as reactive, not operating with the base software, but rather have a software that's been updated through experience.

Heather Gates 
Updated. Right. Update. Update your software.

Ahmad Hariri 
Always update. As much as we get our app updates.

Heather Gates 
Maybe that's part of what we're saying. Yeah. Is y'all make sure we're you're doing your system up updates. Make sure we understand not only how this base model is operating and what our natural tendencies are, we have neurodivergence and are wired lots of ways in in that regard.

Ahmad Hariri 
Or if you're unhappy with some aspect of the way your brain is functioning, you can change it.

Heather Gates 
And I assume that that's within some parameter. Yes. Right. Of course. So just to acknowledge, right, I'm not saying if I you know, that there's everything. There is a range. All of this is and sure. so the right limits.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yes, there are limits. But I think the limits to how we can change our brains and through our brains our behavior are much greater. I mean greater in the sense that they are not as constrictive as the limits we face with our physical body. Or we can do. Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Heather Gates 
There's more we can do than we So probably we're we're under developing our brains. And I just right wanna recognize just like physical, I can… I will never be as tall as you. Right. No matter how many Pilates classes we go to.

Ahmad Hariri 
Too if you if you were focused and determined, you can learn everything I've learned about the brain. Right. I mean it'll take time, right. But there's no reason that you couldn’t do it. 

Heather Gates 
There is a lot we can change and we can't change everything. Maybe is the and to stand in with that. Is as we're talking about all of this. Especially I think as, you know, for me when I think about neurodivergence and how that, you know, intersects with the conversation that we had previously about neuroplasticity. There are things we can influence and it's not everything. Yeah. I hope that this episode today is just a reminder of maybe a call, a reminder not only back to our own awareness about how our environment shapes us, but a call toward each other. and a reminder that that takes a little may take some effort, right? So can be uncomfortable at times and is to the benefit.

Ahmad Hariri 
It can be uncomfortable. Irritating even.

Heather Gates 
Of us individually and collectively. So not just the collective. I think it's not just to me about you know, broadening what's possible or adaptive from a group view of it. But just what a beautiful, broader view on the human experience. Of of a greater, right? How my brain now wires and fires differently. meeting you at Duke person.

Heather Gates 
Right? The diversity in this room. Your country of origin, mine is different. So just the expansiveness I feel with the type of learning that comes from diversity of all type. And collective of all type. So

Ahmad Hariri 
And I to say why I think what you're doing, Heather, is so important. It's such a gift to your audience because just in listening to our conversation, I hope that anyone else can see that it's there's no magic here, right? It's not inscrutable code. And hopefully in our conversation, we've provided your listeners with you know, a vocabulary that they can access and use to discuss and describe their own experiences and those that they share with their family and friends. And from there, I think only really remarkable, beautiful thing that's going to happen.

Heather Gates 
hope so yeah I think the more that I know just for I try to speak from my own experience as much as possible. The more comfortable I am speaking about my experience, the more I can make it clear. Right, kids no big deal. This is how we're gonna coexist and work better together and here's how I'm gonna keep mine Amy calm down so that we can do things. And everybody we need her. She is an adaptive part of the ecosystem.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, and having your Amy upset sometimes.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, the last thing we want is for everyone to be the same. I mean, that is not how nature works. Nature thrives on diversity, diversity of our physical biodiversity literally, but in terms of our brains, we really need the diversity because it just gives us all an opportunity to make the most of this time we have together and and the experiences that we can share.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, biodiversity.

Heather Gates 
I love it. All right, y'all. We gotta cut this. We gotta cut it. All right. Ahmad and I could talk about five hundred. We don't actually know how long we could talk about it because we just run out of studio time. They start turning the lights off again at a certain point. thank you for being up for noodling over this stuff.

Ahmad Hariri 
Should be familiar to the first

Heather Gates 
And folks listening, I hope you'll continue. I mean, again, on my side, I'm just trying to understand this and figure it out. Doctor Hariri represents his perspective. I'm all this too. There will be other perspectives. Sure. You know, I love and I hope we keep talking about. Like that's what I love about this is like let's just bring our curiosity to each other. every episode I do, I see the beauty and just sharing a space that is curious. 

Ahmad Hariri 
That's the important thing.

Heather Gates 
So part of what I wanna remind people and lead people with is just stay curious. Stay curious about what's happening for you. And stay curious about what's happening for others and each other in the collective sense. 

Ahmad Hariri 
One of the greatest brains in you know of in our history, Einstein. He would always say that what distinguishes me perhaps from any or other people is I'm curious. I'm endlessly curious. That's all you need. Once you have that, who knows what's gonna

Heather Gates 
There we go.

Heather Gates 
Well, and with all of us, right, bringing our diverse experiences and perspectives and brains together with curiosity. We face some significant challenges right now as a species. Absolutely. Like if we look at it just from the science of things. I think there are a lot of challenges ahead of us. And no one brain. no one artificial brain is gonna be able to to figure it out. So I think I want to just keep reminding humans how amazing we are and the potential that we have in ourselves and with each other. when we really can be thoughtful about how we leverage that.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, and it's it takes effort. It's hard work, but it's worthwhile. I can't think of anything more worthwhile that that is effortful.

Heather Gates 
Yeah, I would say it's the right kinda heart. So cheers to the right kinda heart. Stay curious.

Ahmad Hariri 
Yeah, exactly. Exactly Yes indeed. Ge to work and enjoy it while you're at

Heather Gates 
We'll see y'all again next time. Maybe Dr. Hariri will do episode three with us and we'll talk about the aging brain. Okay. I'll be back. Next time. Thanks, everybody. 

The Stand in the And podcast is supported by Human Centered Strategy, where we help leaders and teams build connection and strategy and complexity so that everyone can flourish. To learn more or to work with us, please visit us online at human centered strategy.com or message me on LinkedIn.