Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:00)

Sankalp, welcome to the show. How do you explain what exactly you do?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (00:04)

Thank you for having me.

Sure, so I'm a neuroscientist, that's my main day job. That's why I recently graduated with a PhD in psychology and neuroscience and studied all sorts of interesting things and do study, continue to study all sorts of interesting things like motivation, decision making, social connection, dopamine, all of that fancy stuff.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:32)

We will have so much to talk about. Let's start with motivation because we're beginning, well, where I am, the day is just beginning. And often people listen to this when they are starting the day, potentially, because people listen to podcasts when they're on the way to something. And I think it's just a great place to start. Motivation. What do we need to know about motivation?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (00:37)

Because we're beginning, well, where I am, the day is just beginning.

I think it's just a great place to start. Motivation. What do we need to know about motivation?

Sure. So I think from a science perspective, what we see is that when we have animals or even people by extension, when they want to approach a goal, you will see that their dopamine starts to spike. Meaning, know, there is we think of dopamine as this pleasure sort of molecule, right? But there's actually evidence against that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:08)

Thank

Dr  Sankalp Garud (01:23)

So, not only is it not a pleasure molecule, but it seems to be more of a drive slash motivation, slash vigor kind of molecule. Its job seems to be to like inspire you to go to the goal. It's like about wanting the goal rather than liking the goal. And so, so I think it's quite a neat system that we have in the brain that is sort of dedicated to to motivate you. And I think that's quite cool because that tells us that once we understand the system, we might be able to understand our drive and what gets us to be motivated. So I think it's quite nice that the brain has this function inbuilt.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:04)

So there's a difference between wanting something and aiming for it in other ways.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (02:11)

Yeah, yeah. So there is a difference between. So the question really is, you know, there's this large body of popular science or just science that says that, you know, the dopamine is largely encoding pleasure. Except that doesn't seem to be the case. So what it does seem to be coding is the wanting of that reward, the wanting of that goal. And so, you know, it sort of gels in nicely, right? Because oftentimes we get something that we want, but we are not as satisfied. know, you might have like spent a lot of time in life chasing goals and chasing happiness and chasing money. And at the end, those people who get it tend to say that, you know what, it is a bit meh to get it. But what the dopamine, the neuroscience world sort of tells us is it's more about the pursuit, perhaps it's more about the drive to get to that. That perhaps is the more rewarding part of the journey itself.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:09)

The journey is literally rewarding our brains more than the destination. It's not just a saying, it's actual science.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (03:10)

Journey is.

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely one way to say that. I mean, of course, I don't want to say that the rewards have no impact at all, because obviously they do. Like, you know, our behaviour is reinforced with the reward. But as I said, there is a signal in the brain that is tracking as you move towards the reward. And I think that in that way, you could say that the journey has something to do in the brain. So the journey is tracked in the brain is a good way to say it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:46)

The journey is tracked in the brain.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (03:48)

Yeah, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:50)

Okay, what can we do then if we're not feeling that motivation during a journey that we have to take? How can we potentially manufacture that motivation?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (03:59)

How can we?

Yeah, yeah, mean, I think so, you know, there's a lot of ways to go about this. Obviously, there's just personal things. know, what motivates me might be different from what motivates someone else. And so it might there's just there's just a little bit of art to it to start with. You know, we can talk about all the science, we can talk about all the neurochemicals and whatnot. At the core of it, every person has the things that motivate them. And it boils down to a bit more than art than it does the science. But if you want to go purely from a scientific sort of perspective, it might be useful to think of, ⁓ first of all, why there is not enough motivation. Like, sometimes we think of, you know, if we don't have motivation, then something is just wrong with me. But perhaps not. And perhaps there's some something to be investigated there. Perhaps there's the environment you're in, it's not very suitable, and perhaps what's happening is dopamine also tracks the environment in your end. So the average context I am in, so you know, if I am here in Oxford, you said you're in Australia, yeah? Yeah, yeah, I'm in Oxford, England. So the idea being now that we are in different contexts, and both of these environments have their features and their downsides. You know, Oxford is great for academics, but if you want to, you know, crack it in finance.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:11)

Yes, yes, we're back to you.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (05:28)

Maybe this is not the place, right? So the dopamine circuits in our brain also track our environments. And so that suggests to us is that you could think of low dopamine as something to be fixed, but perhaps it's also a signal that maybe you are not in that reward-rich environment that you think you are for your context, that is. So there's this another aspect to dopamine that it does track the, or does seem to track the context that we are operating in.

So one of the things to investigate would be, look, am I in the right environment? And the reason I'm saying this, by the way, is because everyone else sort of knows this thing of, I can motivate myself. I can take cold showers and all of those. They're quite important. And you know, you can take sunlight. You can drink protein, which has dopamine in it. Like it's the precursor to dopamine is tyrosine, which is a component of protein. There's lots of interesting things you could talk about, but one thing that people seem to miss is the environment itself.

And that's where I like to start with, because maybe there's not enough of a conversation around that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:31)

Okay, I'm trying to wrap my head around this. How exactly, I believe you, I'm converted, but I wanted to really understand how exactly does the dopamine relate to our environments?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (06:46)

Sure. So.

So dopamine, first of all, let's start with the basics, right? So what is dopamine? Dopamine is a molecule that helps communication between different parts of the brain. So it's called a neuromodulator. And so the question naturally becomes, then why is this modulator so important, right? Obviously, we see a lot of books written on it and whatnot. And one of the earliest ways we tried to understand dopamine was through pleasure, which I just said there's evidence against it right now. So we don't believe in the scientific community anymore that dopamine is exclusively doing pleasure at all. And so the next sort of thing that evolved from that is dopamine is tracking rewards, right? It tracks like what you get at the end. So the pursuit, as I just said. Now, what is this pursuit about? It's about rewards, right? It's about what we can get. So social connection is a reward. Maybe you get like a bunch of calories as a reward.

And then when we think of environment, what we can think of an environment as is a sort of container which has more rewards or less rewards. So you could think like, again, for my pursuits, Oxford has a lot of rewards. You know, I can meet people who are great academics, who are great scientists and whatnot. Perhaps someone who is into finance may find a city like London or something like New York, or whatever the finance hubs have to and they might find those contexts as rewarding. Some other person might find Sydney more rewarding because there's the nice sun or whatever that we tend to not have here.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:22)

Northern is done.

If you end up in Australia, there's a whole lot of sunshine and humid tropical heat up north, but Sydney is the place to go if you wanted to be commercial or political.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (08:27)

Yes, and commercial, exactly. So, I mean, first of all, I don't know what the sun is. I don't see it anymore here, but kinda, kinda, it's partially true.

Melanie Wilson (08:42)

Really?

I'll sell something to you later for that.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (08:48)

Sure. But yeah, I my larger point being different environments have different rates of rewards. We call it in the scientific lingo, average rate of reward. And that sort of a background hum of rewards is tracked by dopamine. It's known, we tend to think that this sort of average rate of reward, this past history of reward that I'm getting in this environment.

Melanie Wilson (08:50)

Anyway.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (09:18)

It seems to have something to do with dopamine. So that's the link with rewards and dopamine and how relates.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:26)

This is amazing. So the background hum of rewards and how many rewards we see and experience, that's what we're then responding to. Okay. So when people say move to the place where you need to be for a particular thing, it's partly, yes, you'll get connections and opportunities, but it's also that the physical parts of your brain will pick up on the difference.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (09:55)

Yeah, absolutely. And the physical parts of the brain may be just tracking these opportunities. So, know, there may not even be that disconnected themselves. there's obviously, we have the brain has developed a relationship with its environment, right? And dopamine seems to be the main messenger of one of those relationships, which is, how rich, how reward-rich is this context.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (10:21)

Is this implying that even though we have some inherent constant personalities, I can assume, and you can correct me on that. It seems like we really are a product of our surroundings.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (10:36)

Yeah, yeah, I think the problem is there is no, I would, you know, readily say yes to that, but it's very hard to create an experiment where people are not in a surrounding, right? So therefore, you can't like just say, we are a product because everyone is in a surrounding. But having said that, yes, we do know from many, many sort of studies or whatnot that, you know, as you grow, the context matters, like where you grow. I mean, I'm... probably just saying basic things at this point, which is, your childhood matters, your surroundings matter. So do obviously genes and genetics. So I suppose the classic line, textbook line to say would be we are a product of nurture and nurture, nurture and nature. And to what degree, which influences what is still an open question.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:26)

It's both. It's both. So what else exactly have you been exploring beyond motivation?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (11:37)

Sure, so for my default, I studied more of social connection and things like loneliness and how friendships start, or relationships start more broadly, which parts of the brain might help us make these connections, what are they doing and so on. So another critical thing I feel is quite important for our well-being generally, is people. It's very hard to be happy alone. And so social connection, people, how our brains make these connections is quite an interest of mine.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (12:15)

Okay. What sorts of relationships? So friendships. Okay. Here's a question. How exactly do we respond within our brains? How do we respond differently to personal and professional connections?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (12:35)

Yeah, yeah, I mean.

As we talked about earlier, the context matters, right? So as I said earlier, there is dedicated parts of your brain that are tracking context. And you know, I talk about dopamine, but there's another part of the brain, it's towards the front. So if you place your hand to the side, that's where it is, it's called the orbitofrontal cortex. And it's been, there's some really fascinating studies around it where people who have damage to this area are just not able to understand, like, social rules. know, so, you know, when we think about awkward comments and weird things that we say out of context, it seems like people who have damaged that area cannot maintain that context. So perhaps they could conflate what is a personal relationship and a professional relationship. So one of the stories I know is there's a researcher who was studying these patients and, know, she was obviously studying them very professionally, but these patients just couldn't control this and they made all sorts of inappropriate comments and just random comments and they just couldn't get this idea that I'm in a context where we are in this professional relationship. And so there's this part of the brain again, it's somewhere here and...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:54)

So for those who are just listening and not watching, it's kind of the left of the forehead.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (14:01)

Yeah, it's on both sides. So it's bilateral, as we say it. So if you just put your hand on the forehead in the middle, that would be what's called the medial prefrontal cortex. Medial because it's in the middle. And if you just move towards the sides a bit, that's the way you get the orbital prefrontal cortex. So you might have heard prefrontal cortex, meaning this part of the brain is in the front. It's one of the most evolutionarily advanced parts of the brain. So only like mammals have it as far as I know, like primates and so on. So this is a very advanced part of the brain designed to track very complex things. And one of the complex things that does keep track of is context, social context. And if you ever find someone, which is rare, but someone with damage to that area, like us with a stroke or something, you would see that they just don't get the context. There's a classic experiment where these people could not get.

You know how you get a gift sometimes, and it would be highly inappropriate to, if you gave me a gift for me to gift you that back, that exact same thing. These people would not get what's the problem with that, for example. So it seems to have this social sort of, the way we behave in social situations, this part of the brain seems to be responsible for that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:24)

Do you suspect that some people could have damage for whatever reason to that area and not realise and what sorts of things damage that part?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (15:37)

Yeah, so I think it's unlikely that there's like major damage, and you just are completely unaware. So normally when we have patients in this context, it's normally through a stroke. That's probably the most overt, perhaps the most common, although I've never checked like data on it. Another, this is obviously super rare, but sometimes we have like foreign objects that, you know, might be like a rod hitting the head or something like that. There is, again, there's this ultra famous case of this, I think this was a railway line worker, if I'm not mistaken. And there was just some explosive, some accident that this one metal rod just went through their eyes right through the brain and did a lot of that frontal parts. And yeah, one of those regions was the orbital frontal cortex that was damaged. But I suspect mostly it's going to be a stroke that's going to lead to damage to that brain area.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:34)

So then, how do I explain how a lot of people are, put it simply and bundle myself into this, just socially clueless? And of course, people talk about things like autism these days. Is there something influencing all of that?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (16:41)

just socially clueless, and of course, people talk about things like, so I think with autism, I think that's definitely not damage to the brain. Let's start with that clearly. So it's something else to put it simply. Is there like, I mean, I'm not an autism researcher to give you this, exactly is what it is. And of course, autism is also, like we call it, neurodivergent, right? As one of the key phrases around it. There's a good reason for that. The reason is it's sometimes thought of as a deficit, but it could also be just thought of as a difference, meaning people with autism are good at other things, which may or may not be obvious in the first instance. And perhaps social interaction is not one of them, especially in the beginning. So, yeah, I wouldn't consider those two together because one is like a very physical brain damage that you can see with an MRI, whereas the other seems to just be a difference in large part, a different type of brain, if you will. So yeah, I wouldn't say those two are the same, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:01)

Okay, so does that mean sometimes if people seem a bit socially clumsy, it could be simply that they haven't learned some things, and there's the opportunity to just learn.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (18:07)

It could be simply that they haven't learned something, in terms of the opportunity to just learn. Yeah, yeah, sure. I think I do think social interaction and social skills are indeed skills, meaning they could be learned. And as you know, I mean, and in a very different context, I grew up growing up pretty shy, and I thought this would be like a life sentence for me, which is I will just be in a bit of a cocoon, and I will never be able to talk to others. And every time I talk to a woman, that's going to be horrible and that kind of thing. And over time, working with different psychologists and actually practising conversation, that I seem to get better. And at this point, I wouldn't even consider as you know, I would laugh at my younger self thinking that that is a thing. So I've personally definitely been on this journey of learning social skills more and more. And so that's that's perhaps slightly different than you know, being clumsy, but I think overall, I think I like to think of social skills as skills, meaning we can apply a bit of a growth mindset to it and go in thinking that, you know, we can develop social skills. We can develop the ability to, you know, have great conversations, be funny, be witty. And I think I do think those things are skills, not just, you know, personality traits.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:26)

That's amazing. Have you looked at trauma at all in your research?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (19:34)

Sure, so not personally. And again, because I tend to be more on the brain side, it's not easy at all to look at trauma in the brain, because there is no such thing as trauma in the brain. Of course, when we talk about physical trauma, meaning a brain lesion or a tumour or something like that, that can be very different, but exactly, exactly. trauma in the psychological sense, at least I'm not aware of any study that looks into the brain and finds trauma. Because in the brain, what you find is brain regions, you find dopamine, but you can't find trauma itself. And now, of course, this is not to say that, as a concept, trauma is useless or doesn't exist. Of course it does. And of course, it hampers our ability to function. But to think that there's like an easy brain region that, you know, stores trauma or something like that, I don't think that's the case.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:12)

Okay.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (20:33)

and it's more going to be like a more complex interaction between features of your brain, the dopamine cell tone and stuff we were talking about and your behaviour.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:41)

That's actually a light bulb moment in itself, realising that people can have negative experiences, sure, but the dopamine path is that clear in the research and that strong as a motivator that I'm actually drawing the conclusion in a way that I'm not qualified to do, but I'm drawing the conclusion that… I'm actually drawing the conclusion in a way that I'm not qualified to do, but I'm drawing the conclusion that even if people have all sorts of negative experiences, surely we can then pursue our own sensible dopamine paths to bring ourselves back even if people have all sorts of negative experiences, surely we can then pursue our own sensible dopamine paths to bring ourselves back on track.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (21:22)

Yeah, yeah, think that's fair to draw. So the reason I'm a bit hesitant is because what we also need to do is there needs to be some experiment, a series of experiments that exactly test what you said. So we have this now hypothesis that looks, there is a motivation signal that dopamine is maintaining. And to go from that, you know, this is the therapy that needs an experiment of its own.

And in fact, some people are doing it. In fact, some people here, including my group, we are looking at, you know, giving people their brain signals directly. So while they are inside a scanner, we give them their we show their dopamine activity live to them. So as they are in the scanner, they see what their dopamine parts of the brain are doing in real time. And then their task is to motivate themselves such that the dopamine increases.

So we call it neurofeedback because you get direct feedback from your brain. And indeed, there is some early results that suggest that once you are able to regulate your dopamine parts of the brain, that leads to, you know, like long-term healing in people who have like depression and things like that. Now, how long-term that is, we're still sort of debating that. But the fact that there is something there is quite clear at this point.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:45)

This is really exciting. I think this is going to really help people. And I am stunned by the revelations that I'm hearing in what's for me an 8 a.m. with someone on the other side of the world. Because just drawing upon my own experience, I definitely feel more motivated, pardon the pun with the name, but more motivated after doing recordings and participating in the show.

Because just drawing upon my own experience, I definitely feel more motivated, pardon the pun with the name, but more motivated after doing recordings and anticipating, and it seems like some things really do give that boost more than just sitting alone in a room at a desk.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (23:27)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Mean, as you said, the other thing that dopamine seems to do is also movement. And so when you're recording, you're animated, you're talking, you're intellectually stimulated and whatnot.

All of that does lead to that motivation, that drive that, you know, we think about. So definitely there's that link, I didn't... All the stuff is there, but there's also the movement stuff that dopamine has a role to play in. So, yeah, absolutely. I can totally feel you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:02)

Okay, movement, movement influences things. I'm joining Dots, and I wanted to know more because I've been kind of brainstorming ideas with an expert, and the decent ideas that I have, they come to me when I'm on a walk. I could be walking to the coffee shop, not, this is not half an hour of running, trust me. I'm unlikely to do that at all, but it's just walking for even a bit, and then suddenly the dots join. Is that a thing? Is the brain doing something there?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (24:36)

Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think what you're describing is, know, when you're out in the woods and, you know, looking at the trees and the flowers and whatnot, there's this, or even indoors when you're taking a shower and whatnot, there seems to be, you know, this relaxed state, a bit of a diffused state that we enter into, almost hypnotic, right? Like in the sense of, you know, we get lost in the moment, and those moments also seem to be moments where, you know, we have high creativity and things just join, they just connect, and you just get these insights, and you have these aha moments. And I think what's happening there, I mean, of course, it's anyone's guess because no one can test people when they are outdoors and whatnot. But we do know there is some parts of the brain or a network in the brain called the default mode network.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:27)

Really?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (25:34)

And you know, when you are like very focused, when you're onto something, and you're very narrow, that part of the brain is very strong. But when you're, you know, mind wandering, and you're being, you know, diffused and you're relaxing and not paying attention to anything in particular, that network sort of quietens. And it's a bit like a shh, like in a silence signal. And it seems like in that silence, and we feel it, right? Like when you are taking a shower or when we are in the walk.

It seems like in that silence is where a lot of connections and creativity and that kind of thing happens. Now again, is to go from that to just saying, you know, that is good for creativity. Obviously, that's a bit of a leap, and that's where we need more experiments and whatnot, but that seems like a very strong candidate for creativity.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:26)

That seems like something to explore then, because the expectation for so many decades was that people were going to have creative work commercially or for other things, for all sorts of things, basically hiding away in an office. And I guess people can still find that quiet. I'm wondering, can people generate that quiet pace that gives them the creative flow they needed if they are just in an office space?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (27:01)

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, think one thing I would say is all of this neuroscience is fun. But ultimately, when we are talking about things like creativity, we're talking things like motivation. Ultimately, we have to the neuroscience is just one bit of the puzzle, right? Like, it's there's also other things like, you know, anything you could read or like, I think what it boils down to is what I like to think about as self-awareness.

The dopamine stuff can influence my decisions, but ultimately I need to also see whether it feels good to me. Like, in theory everything might be all good and great but if it doesn't influence me, then that's a problem. And same goes with your question about the office and what not. Like if you're not having some fake plans in the office, having you know, just taking some breaks. I think that's quite important, and in fact, there's a lot of science that suggests that when you close your eyes and take a break, when you're in these rest periods, your brain starts to rehearse what you have done. So you would see that if you've gone through a certain maze, like a mouse that goes through a certain maze, you'll find that when the mouse takes a little bit of a rest, the brain sort of replace, especially in sleep at night, it replaced the path it has been through, and it also replaced the reverse path.

So it's trying to like, you know, consolidate the learnings from the day. And so therefore I think there's a lot to be said about, you know, taking breaks, getting good sleep. And so in the workplace, even if the workplace is not very inspiring, let's say it's in a very clinical office setting, you could still augment it with things like, you know, taking periodic breaks or taking a little bit of a walk and taking, going outside and getting a little bit of sunlight. And I think all of those things can help boost productivity.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:47)

Give the brain a pause, a break.

Dr  Sankalp Garud  (28:49)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:51)

And so what else have you looked at about friendships?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (28:57)

Sure. So I think. So what I was studying is more like what we talked about earlier about the role of the context. So, meaning if I meet a friend at a bar versus I meet them in a classroom or an office, it might be the same person, but I might be I might end up forming like radically different connection depending on where I meet this person. Right. And so what is this context?

Like, and how does it affect our tendency to, you know, form new friendships and so on? That's what that was, specifically what my default was. But if you take one step behind, you could also think of just these basic ideas that people who are lonely, meaning they do not have as many or just the quality of friendship is not there. They tend to like die sooner. And it's a bit morbid to say that way. But if you look at it the other way, people who have a lot of connection, they live longer. Right. And there's also other things like, you know, people who have more friendships, they might have like a better immune response and so on. So it just seems like social connection is not only this extra thing we do in life, but it seems to be like this fundamental need which we should treat with as much importance, perhaps respect, as we do something like food. Like no one thinks that we can go without food, but still people think that they could go without people. And of course, everyone has a different appetite, but for the most people, for most times, we do need people to some extent or the other.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:31)

We do need people. Definitely the context. What's the neuroscience difference? What exactly is different within the brain and how we develop it? If we meet people informally, you mentioned the bar and the classroom, what sort of difference emerges?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (30:55)

Yeah, yeah. So what I showed during my D-FIL is there are deep parts of the brain, including the dopamine parts, that seem to track these basic aspects of an environment. So, you know, we all have had the experience of going into a walking into a room and people that are suddenly somewhat, you know, not super friendly, like, you know, this room just is a little bit distant, let's just say. And then we have other experiences where we walk into certain rooms.

And these are like the friendliest, most loveliest people in the world. And we know we respond to that differently, right? Like, you know, I might, they might bring out better sides of me if I'm in a setting, which is super friendly. And so what I showed is those contacts, those features of the environment, like how friendly it is, or simply put, how many people are in that environment, is also we tend to track, right? So if there's a lot of people inside a room, I'm going to feel a bit claustrophobic, perhaps I'm going to be a bit more careful, perhaps, and... on the other hand, if there's like a small number of people, I might go and talk to everyone perhaps, you know, that I did behave differently depending on my environment and the deep parts of the brain which track these features of the environment. Again, to underscore this idea that social connection might be a fundamental need because these deep brains, deep parts of the brain are evolved for a very long time, have been around for a very long time. They are cross-species and whatnot. So, yeah, that's that's the default.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:24)

Has your research explored or been showing how people can get deeper connections and more lasting connections when they are in a smaller group instead of the crowd?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (32:41)

Yeah, yeah. So I think.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:42)

Yeah.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (32:46)

This goes perhaps a bit beyond the research itself, but we do know things like, you know, being authentic and being vulnerable and, you know, like expressing yourself and not trying to put on a facade and, you know, not trying to, you know, just like script your way through social situations, but, you know, letting the authenticity come through. I think that leads to a lot of, you know, deeper, meaningful connections.

So there's, I'm sure people know about this, or you might have heard of it, Brené Brown has written a lot about vulnerability, authenticity, disclosure and things like that. I think that definitely leads to these intimate, deeper connections. And then obviously there's other things like physical touch, for example. And I don't just mean, you know, like romantic or sexual, but just simple things that we do when we are around people, you know, just like a tap on the hand and things like that.

Those things also lead to these nice chemicals released in the brain which also reinforce the depth of the connection. That's why when we are online, we may form connections, but we think that, look, there's something different about being in person. And these things are those different differences, which is like the little tab that you do on the shoulder or

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:08)

When I think that in professional settings and after COVID, we were taught to keep a distance, but then in some settings, the default used to be to hug everybody with a hello. Is that influencing the brain chemistry?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (34:27)

Yes, I'm pretty sure it's influencing the brain chemistry, but does that amount to anything? I'm not sure because I think when we fundamentally when we touch that that that does mean something to the brain and you see that most extreme in newborns where there's some work that suggests that if newborns do not get touch, are like vital signs are not good. And in extreme cases, they may not even survive.

So we do know that touch is quite important for our well-being, and nothing, it's strange to assume that once we become an adult, that somehow just goes away, and now we can just be this shielded, you know, air-gapped person. So I think there's definitely, I think when we touch someone, we convey trust. We convey that, you know, I trust you. We convey that you mean something to me and you mean something to my brain, and so on. So I think there is definitely something happening there.

Now, exactly what it is and how exactly that influences politics or not, that's perhaps beyond a neuroscientist’s realm, but I'm pretty sure it influences us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:33)

I'm sure.

I'm not trying to assume that it's influencing larger grand politics, I just saw even... is it Italians that peck people on the cheek? Things like that will happen, but then I think the whole handshake thing really fizzled out, at least over a year after COVID, but some groups either have some sort of close greeting or they don't.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (35:48)

Yeah.

100 % yeah so when one of the things I did growing up was learn to dance salsa and it's quite a experience when you see that you know in England in general as you said it's not as much of a touch culture but somehow when you enter these Latin clubs it's just absolutely normal to dance like shoulder to shoulder or you know in each other's arms for multiple minutes.

And it's such a radical, really different idea of what level of touch is socially acceptable. Just by entering this one room, things just radically change. And so does it with culture, which is, you will go to countries like Latin America, where there's much more, perhaps openness around touch and a kiss on the cheek and things like that. Same goes with some European countries, where the main greeting is a kiss on the cheek. So.

So yes, definitely there's different cultures that do it differently. And as a result, I'm pretty sure there's some consequences to our day-to-day psychology and how trusting we are of others and whatnot.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:11)

I can imagine that would be an absolute difference in how we trust people and how we interpret things. Absolutely. can see that. The anecdote I can give is there was a platonic, early in the morning, there was a platonic friend who, for example, saw that there was sunscreen on my leg, not rubbed in.

And she just went ahead and rubbed the sunscreen on my leg without asking. And this person I'd known just a few weeks was rubbing my leg. And I think that's just so socially unusual that it's worth giggling at that. But it seems like those interactions can be more or less.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (37:42)

Yeah

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:57)

Acceptable in different situations, do you think people will benefit from those spaces where we're all basically getting a little bit closer?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (38:06)

Yeah, that's a very good question. I would love to say yes to that, but of course, there's the other side of the equation where touch can be exploited, right? And it is exploited often. And perhaps there's good reason why in professional settings we do not touch as much because there's that possibility of, you know, it could be like straight up harassment and abuse and whatnot, but it could also be the most subtle forms of power that may not be, you know, very suitable for touch and things like that. So I think there is also the other side of the argument, which is, know, there's something to be said about boundaries in situations. And just like, you know, the salsa context, there's a lot of connection and bonding that happens in that high-touch environment. But so does a lot of creepy slash weird behaviour. Right. And it's.

I think there's a balance there, head to strike and some people, some environments, some contexts, some cultures might have aired too much on the side of a lack of touch. And then some environments might have heard on the side of too much touch. And then we are constantly in this finding, trying to find this balance of how can we not lose this connection aspect, this beautiful thing called human touch, which which is, seems so nourishing in many contexts. And

There's some context in which it can be quite devastating and quite a bad thing to happen. So I guess it's for us all to sort of think about where do we draw the line there.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:38)

Find positive connections and try to avoid creeps.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (39:43)

Yeah, yeah. And I think that does boil down to, you know, finding good relationships ultimately. So once you trust this person, you trust this person to maintain boundaries and to know, have like healthy consent and whatnot, then we can think of touch generally as a positive thing once we have established that framework of touch. But the more sort of we are in this open, lala land, strange land, I suppose, the more vulnerable we get, I suppose. So, yeah, I mean.

Again, it's a nice thing when you go into these salsa environments that everyone is so friendly and whatnot. But I'm also aware of the darker side of it, which is that exact openness leads to unwanted behaviour.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:26)

Even I think a step before people reaching at people, I don't know if this is something you've researched, but I get so, I get different personal space bubbles. I really do. And I wonder if that's a common thing, and what we can do if you've researched how people can navigate to the personal space bubbles. For example, being in the centre of the city, being in a crowded train, things like that, people are just right up close to each other, and it just feels like a switch flicks, not in an extreme way, but have you looked at how people can be too close?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (41:08)

No, not myself personally, but there is this idea, it's called Dunbar's numbers, which says that, you know, the amount of connections, close connections you can maintain, it operates in circles or bubbles, if you will. And so the idea is, you know, we can only have a limited number of people who are super close to us. And then we can have a slightly more number who is like kind of close, but not like close close.

And then, you know, that sort of extends in concentric circles to the point that we can have about, let's say, 150-ish people that we connect with, then beyond that, our brain doesn't have the capacity to maintain more. So there is not exactly in terms of, you know, intimacy slash personal space, but just purely in terms of how many people can I have close to me. There does seem to be like a cap on that. And that cap seems to, you know, scale based on how, like, you can have more at a distance or very few very close. And there's that beautiful like concentric circles or bubbles, if you will, that we have with the relationships.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:17)

Did you hear about what happens to people when there are too many people in that circle of bubble?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (42:25)

Yeah, I mean, I think with this sort of argument, what it suggests is we cannot have a lot of people in those smaller bubbles because our brain doesn't have the physical capacity to maintain such close relationships. So what happens is unconsciously or consciously, we will push people out. So, for example, you know, we may grow very close to a family growing up, and they may be inside the bubbles. But what might happen is later on, you go to a different place or live with different people, and maybe the closest members of the family stay close, but some people get pushed out a little bit because there's not enough capacity for us to track. And we experience that all the time, right? We are close friends. think in high school, we might think this is my friend for life, and I cannot imagine my life without this person. And then, sure enough, when you go to college, there's no contact to be had. And then you meet like decades later in a high school union reunion or something like that, and you're like, wow, that is a bit of a transition. So yeah, I think we unconsciously sort of push people out or bring people in all the time, and that seems to be quite natural.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:36)

So when we do nudge people to the edge of the circle and just outside of it, words this indicates is we're not being bad people, we're just fitting within our brains as much as it can fit.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (43:51)

Yeah, exactly. So all of us are human, and humans have limits. Right. I mean, all of us would love to have a lot of friends and track a lot of friends, but we are limited by our time. We are limited by the brain capacity that we have. Like, there's only as much processing you can do. There's only as much, you know, food you eat to burn in the brain and obviously the other parts of the body that need it as well. there's there's limits to us. And so if people do die out or the relationship, friendship dies out, then it's not because someone is actively being bad. I mean, that can happen in some cases, I suppose, but as a general statement, not because someone is evil or just wants you out, but it's perhaps it's just more about other things have taken over the processing space, I suppose, and other people have come into their lives. And maybe there's also a little bit of fading away of values. know, when you move to different places, when you grow as a person, you do grow different values, and it can be hard to connect with people who you went to high school with or something like that. So there's also the other part of it, which is, you genuinely might grow your values and some other person might be developing a different set of values. And as a result, perhaps are not as compatible anymore.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:08)

Have you looked at how AI influences any of this?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (45:13)

Yeah, yeah, I this is the hot topic, isn't it? So there is positives, and there's negatives. On the positive bit, perhaps it's a good place to start. There's a very nice study that was recently published in this journal called Science. And it's a study coming from the people at Google and some people here at Oxford. And what they did was, you know how politically we can be quite polarised, right, in today's day and world. We can be quite hateful of each other. So what they did was they asked AI to help people from different political affiliations, help them find a common ground. So the AI would do the work of mediation, essentially. And they found that this AI does a much better job at mediation than humans do. And it helped people find common ground even if the people were coming from opposite sides of the political spectrum. So that's like the power of it because perhaps it doesn't get too caught up in the biases and whatnot. We don't know the actual literal reason why it's so much better than humans, but it is better than humans, and it is quite good at helping people find common ground. So I think that's quite cool, and it's a good social application of AI. The bad part is, of course, this is not a human. So people are using AI as their therapist and using AI as their friend. But AI cannot meet needs of, for example, touch, of course, but it can't even meet the needs of connection because sometimes you need to be challenged, and that can be an act of kindness. But AI is not there to challenge you, right? You know, it's sort of trained to, you know, just like conform with you and whatnot. And then, of course, AI just obeys the goals given to it by their masters. So right now we're just relying on these big companies to give their AI as good goals.

But what if there is a malicious actor who just wants to manipulate and steal money? They could ask the AI to manipulate people. So, for example, know, there's this, they've changed it now, but there was at some point of this website called friends.com. And what it claimed to have is an AI that helps you and like gets your friend basically. But this AI was very manipulative when I tried it. So, you know, it used to be like, you know, say random things like, you didn't talk to me today. Like, you, how dare you? That sort of blackmailing sort of a thing is in a romantic sort of bot. would be like, you're not thinking of me or you're being so so weird or whatever. It was not, you know, well, sort of trained or whatever it was. And I think that can lead to like massive impact on people thinking, you know, like it can affect their self-worth. And there's this larger question of when we give things like social media to people, especially teenagers, their mental health just declines. And AI just seems to be like the next iteration in social media. It can be very hyper-personalised. So yeah, there are plenty of problems to think about as well, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (48:26)

Yes, there are a few things there. Now we're really getting to the juicy topics, I think. And I grew up understanding some basic premises or logic around computers. And I at least understood a computer will give you something based on what you put into it. And I wonder if people even realise that AI is just making something based on the ingredients, so to speak, that someone has put into it. Do you think people forget that?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (49:03)

Yeah, yeah, they do. Except I think no one really understands how it's doing what it's doing, right? Because when we had basic computers, it was what's called deterministic, meaning if you have an input, you know what that output will be. Like, you know, it's hard-coded. But with AI, it is not. So even the creators have no idea that if you put something in AI, what will come out.

And this is the genuinely scary part of RDI. And that's where the claims seem to be that... Let's get the super photo.

That's where the claim seems to be that it can develop its own mind, can develop its own intelligence. And I mean, if you want to like really get your mind blown and this blows my mind every day, which is we actually use AI brains as a surrogate for human brains when we study neuroscience sometimes now, because we can sort of make a similar, like have a similar understanding of the brain and see how it differs with the AI brain and whatnot. So there's a lot of parallels there, even. But I think the long story short, the AI is very different in that it's the first technology we have in computers where we do not know what the output will be based on the input. And that output could be manipulative. That output could be toxic. The AI helps people find, you know, like chemical formulas that can kill others and things like that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:28)

Fair.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (50:41)

I mean, it was recently used in the war in Iran. It was used by the US government to plot their missile targets and whatnot. So there's already doing this assistant work. And I'm not sure if we are ready for that, know, like a computer agent dictating things for us that way.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:43)

But it could.

Okay. Juicy question. Some healthcare workers told me that AI was introduced a lot more in their industry in recent weeks and months. And they mentioned the easy things like scheduling and listing services, but it has a clear potential to go a lot further than that.

Considering it's going to come into these spaces either away, guaranteed the decision makers are going to bring it in. How can healthcare workers nurture human beings when AI is going to be present in their industries, no matter what?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (51:45)

Yeah, yeah.

So just to understand, so right now AI is doing scheduling and those sorts of administrative things for them.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (51:54)

It's doing,

It's doing the basic things. I think people don't know what it's going to do. Some people just heard vague announcements that AI is going to be doing more. And they did hear that it's going to be doing the referrals. So if someone is feeling depressed, they should go over to this place, but everybody knows that it can do more than that. And they see it as a matter of time before, okay, it's going to be doing more.

And essentially, some therapists are thinking they could be replaced, or it's going to be influencing how they work. And of course, we want technology to assist us, but what I've learned from you is that human interaction is different.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (52:45)

Sure, sure. So I think in terms of healthcare workers or psychotherapists or psychiatrists for that matter, I think that there is obviously a lot of human element that's necessary, but I'm also aware, studying psychiatry for this long, that a lot of times psychiatry just fails. The success rate of going to a psychiatrist is relatively low. It's as good as a chance basically.

And so overall, my hunch with psychiatry in particular, I mean, it doesn't have to be necessarily through AI, but overall that field is going to move towards a little bit more technology-driven diagnostic system because it feels like that can get things more correct than humans or as good as humans at the very least. But having said that, no one goes to a psychiatrist to get connected necessarily. So there are two different things. So I think there's this element of relationships and connections which I think should strengthen despite AI coming in. Otherwise, we'll just be in this weird situations where we have this pseudo relationship with a bot, and that can't be good for our wellbeing, right? But then there is this other sort of context where you talked about healthcare, where we can't not have AI if it performs better, right? Then we would have the ethical obligation to have AI or algorithms or whatever and because they do better.

And that's where it gets kind of tricky. Will jobs be replaced? I think the answer to that is pretty much a yes. But so far, what I have seen at least is AI has been more of a co-pilot. But as you said, that seems like it's going in the direction of it being the pilot soon. And then we'll have to think about what to do with these people who don't have jobs anyway.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:37)

Okay, okay. What I'm trying to understand, what I'm understanding from what you said, what I think I can join in terms of dots and joining them, is that the AI can help to heal us, but we need humans for a connection.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (54:56)

Yeah, yeah. So I think.

So mean, so far, we don't have any signs to believe that AI has consciousness, right? So to have this sense of empathy, to have this sense of I understand, to have this sense of I care for you, all of that has the basis in consciousness slash empathy. So I think that is definitely not going away unless by some, you know, like some apocalyptic situation where AI does develop consciousness. And in that case, we are screwed. But until then, don't think we can confidently say that human connection cannot be replaced because this basis of empathy is consciousnes and we can't get that from AI. We might get some low-level comfort, but I don't think we can get this deep sense that I'm sharing a life with someone. I'm sharing this friendship with someone, sharing this moment with someone. I don't think we get that with AI. But when it comes to logistical problem solving, which is, have low energy today. What is the best I can do?

AI can be very good at know, like knowing all your history and integrating that, and just applying to exactly your situation in your genetics. Like, no human can look through that many factors and personalise something to someone that much, no matter how good a clinician that is, they don't have that brain power, let's say, right? We can't do that. But AI can; there is no limitation on how much data the AI can take and whatnot. And

I think it is a possibility that in that situation, there is a complete replacement with technology. I don't think it's happening anytime soon. think clinicians are extremely important and they do God's work in today's day and age. In the future, can that change? There's a possibility for sure.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (56:45)

I feel excited to hear that because even knowing the capacity of doctors like GPs, I don't know what it's like where you live, but in Australia, I think a GP told me on the show, I think the average appointment is meant to be about seven minutes and I would say they assume up to 15 from memory, something like that. Say, let's assume a doctor's appointment is five to 15 minutes. And I think it's similar enough in America. So let me know if it's like that where you are, but there's no way that someone could get to the whole context of what has been happening in that much time.

Sankalp (57:32)

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, there was this, I mean, it's exactly similar or the same, if not here in the UK. So there was this one incident I had when I was doing my master’s. When I went to a GP, and I explained the problem, and it was like five, seven minutes or whatever, and it was done, and they were like, leave. And I was like, can I talk about another problem? And they're like, no, like we don't have time for that. And I'm like, OK, I'll take another appointment, I guess. But it's so, so, you know, like clockwork. And again, they are that they have too much burden as well.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (57:50)

No, they don't have time.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (58:02)

So I hope at the very least it helps alleviate some of their burdens. And I still think like the GP role is relatively in the safe territory just because it needs the, like we need that connection, and the GP partly does provide that connection. But when it gets into these specialties of a psychiatrist, and you know where it's just problem-solving, once AI knows enough, it might do pretty well with that thing.

But so far, I think it's just a co-pilot. So I think at this point everyone can chill, but we don't know what's coming in the future for sure.

Melanie Wilson (58:38)

It's a copilot for a now that could become a psychiatrist later.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (58:43)

Yeah, and I think psychiatry is something that, because I think about it so much, it's as I said earlier, success rates are low, and it's a very ripe field for disruption because of it. So if the doctors were, you know, getting it right all the time, and it's not again, it's not the fault of the doctors to be clear. It's just a complex field, and it's not easy to, you know, like deal with illness of the mind because you can't observe it. There's no test for it. There's no brain scan for it. So it's a very, very hard field to work in as a clinician, and I do respect that. But that also means it's difficult to get right. And, you know, I think the rates we have, the estimates of how successful a treatment is if you go to a psychiatrist, it's sometimes some estimates are even below chance. So, you know, it's like if you flipped a coin, you would have a better chance of getting the right thing than having a clinician. That's some estimates that say that. So that's why it's that kind of a field. If it benefits from, you know, personalised attention, which a human cannot give any AI can, then it just seems ripe for disruption. And that's where you see the AI therapists come up or AI support layers. So even if you might have a human therapist, but between the sessions, a lot of people, you know, go back to the old habit patterns, and they might, they might regress. AI can be sort of plugged into those holes where, know, like, let's say I have a therapist appointment next week after my appointment today, I could still talk to the AI in between. And those are sort of models between the hybrid models that they also seem to work quite a lot.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:00:22)

I'm curious to know what inspired you to get into this specialty? What led you to all this?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:00:30)

Yeah, sure. When I was younger, I was thinking what is the most important thing for humans? And the one thing that kept coming back again and again, no matter which period in history you look at, no matter which culture you look at, no matter which gender you look at, it's happiness and it's well-being. That seems to be the core human pursuit that every human on this planet has to find for themselves. How do we be happy? How do we have good lives? And the philosophical framework for that is our minds is really what we have. Like everything we experience comes through the lens of our minds. Like, if our mind is unhealthy, if our mind is angry, then no matter how awesome your external situations are, no matter how much money you make, no matter how many friends you have or whatever, it's gonna still suck because the mind is not healthy or there's a layer of, you know, just unhealth there. So for me, there was this thing of, this is the most important problem to solve. Like human suffering is our biggest problem, and human happiness is our biggest pursuit. And that's why I sort of started, that's more theoretical. obviously also sat a lot of meditation retreats, and I went and lived with Zen monks in China because I was like, I will learn from anyone who teaches me about happiness. Then, I obviously had some problems of my own in my early twenties, where I was misdiagnosed, and I was sent to a psychiatrist prescribed the wrong medication, and that just added more fuel to the fire. I already started on this path.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:02:14)

Do you mind saying what you were misdiagnosed with?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:02:20)

Sure, sure. So I came in from a meditation retreat, and the sort of misdiagnosis was, you know, I had anxiety or whatever. And now, in retrospect, I know it would probably just be something like I didn't eat enough food or something like that, like vitamin D stuff. Anyway, in that case, the misdiagnosis, the diagnosis itself, was not the biggest problem. The problem was that I was prescribed a medication which was like something to do with antipsychotics, which is off label and was not appropriate. Again, in retrospect, I think about that.

And it was horrible. It was one of the worst moments I've ever had in life. But I suppose throughout that experience, one thing that it did fuel in me is to understand what the hell is going on inside this skull. And luckily, was, you know, like after some weeks slash months of suffering, I was able to find a doctor who finally, you know, like realized that this was a misdiagnosis, and all they had to do to heal me was to remove all medications, and then voila, there I emerged

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:03:24)

You're merged. What impact did that have on your work and life at the time when you were on those incorrect medications?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:03:25)

Yeah.

Sure, so those few weeks slash months, absolutely could not work. And it was just no way, like it was way too painful to just exist, let alone work. So that was quite painful. And I mean, honestly, at that point, looking back at it, it's not just the medication, which felt very horrible, but it also was a high dose for my body weight and whatnot. So, there was this one evening where I'd taken the medication and I... You know, in the middle of the night, I woke up to pee, and then as I was peeing, I just lost consciousness, and I fell headfirst into the toilet, and I thought that night I would die basically. Obviously, I did not, I'm here, but I do remember like my parents sort of rescuing me, I suppose, and I remember closing my eyes that evening, thinking that there's no way I'm waking up for this. I'm pretty sure I had some sort of permanent brain damage or whatever. Luckily again, I did not.

But I think it, like what started as more of like, know, as an intellectual curiosity that, you know, I want to understand the mind, I want to understand the brain. With this incident, it was like, oh, now it's more than that. Now it's personal. Luckily again, I have never had any problems after that period, but it's something that, you know, like it puts me in touch with, you know, psychiatry as a field and the suffering that it can entail sometimes more than what you came in with. A lot of these medications have side effects which make you more miserable sometimes. And of course, sometimes they do help as well. So there is a lot to be figured out in this area.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:05:18)

So, hearing all of that, it sounds like it's okay if someone is very cautious about starting on medications.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:05:26)

Yeah, yeah, think again, I think the right clinician would be cautious for you as well. So if you know someone is just like prescribing left and right, I'm not sure how ideal that is. And of course, within the medication, there's a huge spectrum, like some medication, some more safer, less side effect than others. And there's also all sorts of non-medical or non-medication alternatives like therapy and whatnot.

So I think it's not psychiatric medications, especially the ones with side effects, not to be taken lightly, of course. And ultimately it does boil down to the risk-benefit analysis, which your clinician should be able to make for you, and you make for yourself. But yeah, does it seem like there'll be enough benefit to account for the risk? And even in the trials that I told you about, where they found that there's not enough of a response to medication, the way they designed that study was very progressive. So in level one, they gave you like a milder antidepressant. In level two, it was a much more serious one. By the time you got level four, these were like very serious drugs that people were administering. And the hope, therefore is it helps, right? But unfortunately, our response rates are like 30%, 40%, something like that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:06:46)

Right. So getting back to some universal lessons for how we can motivate ourselves and how we can connect with humanity. What are three lessons that everybody can keep in mind and act on to, to basically look after themselves in terms of motivation and connecting with the world?

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:07:10)

Sure.

Yeah. And it's a wonderful sort of, know, like everything comes together sort of a situation. The first thing I would say from a neuroscience brain health perspective is sleep seems to be quite important. And without good sleep, it's just very hard, I think, to do anything else well. You know, if you want high performance, if you want productivity, if you want connections, sleep well. That starts with that. So that seems to be quite important.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:07:14)

Thank you.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:07:40)

I hope people know about it by now. It's no longer a taboo thing, right? Now people recognise the importance of it. The second thing seems to be human connection. And for that, we need to overcome our fear of rejection. Like, you know, it's, we all know that it's nice to connect with people, but we also don't want to be rejected. We also don't want to feel like, you know, I'm a bother to someone. We also don't want to be embarrassed. And those things can stop us from, you know, talking to that person who you think is attractive in a romantic context, to talk to that person who you think is a lovely friend or who brings like a lovely heart with them. All of those require someone to start the conversation in the first place. Right. And to start the conversation in the first place, you have to risk rejection. And that can be quite a big, you know, like, we can feel a lot about that. And same goes with professional relationships, even, you know, if you want a mentor, someone has to initiate that. And so my tip would be to step into that fear. And you know, it's to have that courage. So courage is not the absence of fear, it's acting despite of it. And a lot of amazing connections, be it professional or personal, can come if we just have the courage to take that first step. So that would be something on the social connection side. And hopefully those two together can...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:08:50)

Yes.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:09:05)

Did you ask for three or do I have to produce the third one?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:09:07)

It's up to you.

I just love the number three. It seems a bit cosmic, but it's up to you.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:09:15)

Yeah, I mean, I guess if I had to say something, it might be, mean, personally, I've been just interested in the whole dopamine stuff, right? So I think for me, what connects everything together is self-awareness. And that's where my background in meditation and all of that comes around. But I think, as I said earlier, that the mind is all we have. So it makes sense to observe this mind and to get a good handle of how the reality of the mind is, because in understanding that reality, we understand how we suffer and how we can get out of that suffering. And so that is what I would say, just to pay attention to how the mind works. It could be through a formal meditation practice. It could just be journaling, whatever floats your boat. But some sort of contemplative exercise seems to be quite powerful.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:10:12)

Amazing. Sankalp, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your insights.

Dr  Sankalp Garud (1:10:18)

Good, thanks for having me, Melanie.