Neuroscience of Focus with Heather Berlin

What makes some people better at focusing? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly learn about the neuroscience behind concentration and performance with neuroscientist Heather Berlin, PhD.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's going on inside the head of someone that can go beyond themselves?

• 0:05Heather Berlin?

  It's, I think that's something that you can't necessarily consciously control. So all these other factors are coming into play. Let's say it's, you know, it's the Olympics and you're running that final race. And just being in that environment, you know, with the audience and the lights and the camera, whatever is there is motivating your body. I mean, we see this in cockroaches when they're

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me tell you something, you cockroach.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Okay, so I was not expecting that. No one was. Okay, sorry.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your host and your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're going to address issues that relate to your power and strength of mind, especially with regard to high-performance athletes. But of course, advice there could probably apply to all of us at all times. I got with me my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 1:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, okay.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it didn't work. I was trying to use my mind to move some stuff in your, in your, in your room.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, it didn't work.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I was trying to tap into the force, man.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you could do that, you are in the wrong profession at this moment.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  That's so true, right?

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just say, and I got Gary Riley. Gary?

• 1:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Hi Neil, I am practicing nothing right now, just being stationary.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. I like a stable world, please, thank you. Gary is a former soccer pro in the UK and soccer announcer. What did you have in mind for this episode?

• 1:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, so we regularly look to the elite athletes to display the kind of supercharged performance and navigate under intense pressure. We want them to have unbreakable concentration. We want them to have off-the-chart cognitive skills. But what if you're not one of these elite athletes? What if you're a first responder? What if you're a surgeon, a police officer, a lawyer, a pilot? A single parent of three. Are the demands on your strength of mind not as intense? So, how do I develop this type of mindset? How do I maintain this type of mindset? Right, they're the questions. For this, we need answers.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So who are you gonna call?

• 2:43Gary O'Reilly?

  The good doctor, Dr. Heather Berlin.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather Berlin?

• 2:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Not only is Dr. Heather Berlin, yay, a good friend to start talk, but a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, associate professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the ICANN School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. So, is eminently qualified to guide us through this particular area of science.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  I love that you turned her a school of medicine into a positive affirmation. The ICANN School of Medicine.

• 3:14Gary O'Reilly?

  I do my best, I do my best.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I C A H N. Heather, how do you pronounce that boy's name? ICANN. ICANN.

• 3:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 3:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Tomato, tomato.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's how you'd say it in the UK.

• 3:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Probably, yeah. Well, and I believe I can.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 3:30Gary O'Reilly?

  No, dear, I believe I can.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More grapefruit, Paul? Yes.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, especially during any game or any contest in high-level sports, but especially in playoffs and in the final games, the coaches will always tell you you need a winning state of mind. And, you know, just like in life. And that's an interesting sort of extra thing that players are gonna have to worry about beyond their physical conditioning. After they spend all those hours in the gym, running up and down stairs, whatever it is. And so, Heather, what makes some people better at focus of mind than others? And can you train this? Is this something that, that, oh, while I'm in the gym, you know, pumping iron or whatever I'm doing,

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is there something else I can do with my mind so that in the moment, when the time comes, I am ready?

• 4:28Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, just like muscles in your body, you know, the mind or the brain, you can think of it like a muscle, right? And the more you exercise certain skills, the more you can develop them. Now, there are individual differences in our ability, say, to focus our attention or to sort of ignore negative thoughts or counterproductive thoughts that you might be having that can interfere with your performance. But there's a level of cognitive control that we need in order to maintain focus and kind of dismiss these negative thoughts that might pop into our minds. And you can practice this skill. And there are particular parts in the frontal lobe that you can use to gain strength, let's say, in this cognitive capacity.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, it's not just negative thoughts, it's just distracting thoughts, right? I mean, any thought that takes you away from where you are, it wouldn't even have to be negative, I presume.

• 5:18Heather Berlin?

  Yes. And one of the practices is mindfulness and mindful meditation, where you have a thought, sort of, it could be a thought that's not relevant to the game, or a negative thought, and you just let it pass, like a cloud passing by. You don't attach to it, you don't let it take you down another path where you get distracted. So we can't stop these intrusive thoughts from coming in, but you can allow them to pass and not attend to them, so that you can maintain the focus on the thing you need to be paying attention to in that moment.

• 5:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that why individual stress levels vary? Because they've attached themselves to this passing cloud rather than just let it fly by? Because you hear people say all the time, "I've had enough." Well, who decides that? You know, what is it that's gone on in your mind that's decided that that's the point?

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That that's your threshold?

• 6:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Heather Berlin?

  So here's the thing, there are two things. One is that there are individual differences in terms of our, what we call like tolerance for distress, okay? So some people have a higher threshold, they can maintain a lot of stress and not sort of break.

• 6:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 6:24Heather Berlin?

  Others' threshold is lower. But yes, anybody who follows, let's say, one of these negative thoughts down a path, you know, let's say the thought is, "I'm not good enough." And then it goes to, "Oh, I'm not good enough, that means I'm gonna do terrible in this game, and I'm gonna lose, and the whole team's gonna be disappointed in me," and on and on and on. Of course, anybody would start to get upset by those thoughts. So the more you follow them and let them lead you down this negative thought path, the more likely you are going to get more stressed out. So the idea is to have a negative thought and just let it go. And keep redirecting your attention to something positive or to the task at hand. You know, I gotta catch this ball right. I can't let that thought take me away.

• 7:01Chuck Nice?

  So does that?

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I keep hearing in my head, I keep hearing in my head, don't worry, be happy.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Yep. It works.

• 7:11Heather Berlin?

  But actually, music, music can, um, there are a bunch of studies that show that music can actually change your mood and help you adapt to stress. And people are like, neurosciences are working together to create playlists that can either help increase your attention and focus, or put you in a better mood. So music-

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, we saw that in the Olympics where the guys coming out, you know, the swimmers were coming out and everybody had their little headphones on. You know, and you wondered, what are they listening to? I want to know.

• 7:39Chuck Nice?

  I hate, I hate to interrupt. Can we, uh, can we just sing another song? I can't get that damn song out my head now.

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 7:51Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so, okay, we've, we've just planted a few earworms, that's for sure.

• 7:56Heather Berlin?

  But one thing to say though about music is that it does, um, impact the subcortical, evolutionarily older parts of your brain that are below the cortex. And that's why people, for example, with Alzheimer's, when they're having dementia, like the sort of decreased cortex. If you play music for them, it can incorporate them because it's these more subcortical, deeper-

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard about that.

• 8:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's pretty cool, yeah.

• 8:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Was it Oliver Sacks that went down that route with music, music philia, that book?

• 8:24Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, there was, there was a film on it.

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  Tony Bennett, Tony Bennett had advanced dementia and was able to sing all of his songs. If you started him off, all you had to do was, I left my heart, and then he would boom, right into it.

• 8:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  You know?

• 8:40Heather Berlin?

  Because it's instantiated in the brain, like riding a bike. Once you hit that, the basal ganglia, it's like this sort of, it automatically just goes, like you flow into it.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, just spend a minute about what is the basal ganglia?

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 8:52Heather Berlin?

  It, it's a complex subcortical structure and it's broken up into different parts. But it's involved in what we call implicit memory, especially motor memory. So when you're first learning to ride a bike, you have to think about it, right? You're using your cortex. And once it becomes, after practice, it becomes automatic, then it gets moved into that basal ganglia, which means you don't have to think about it the next time you ride a bike.

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:17Heather Berlin?

  And, and then, but that's also the part of the brain that's affected in Parkinson's disease. And, and so it's involved in lots of different things. But if you think about automatic behaviors that we need to not be able to think about, like walking, we can't always have to think about how to walk. Basal ganglia will control that. But music sort of, it gets instigated and not part of the brain.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And you know what's cool is all this, Heather's, when you talked about underneath, it might be important to talk to the audience about the layer cake of the brain, because that's something I learned from Heather in just a offline conversation that I did not know about, that your brain is built platform on top of platform on top of platform because of evolution, right?

• 10:03Heather Berlin?

  Yes, that is how it evolved. You explained it just better than me. I mean, I should ask you the question.

• 10:09Heather Berlin?

  But yeah, I mean, sometimes the, this, the subcortical structures are called the reptilian brain or the lizard brain. This limbic system that's like your raw sensations, like emotions, anger. And, and it's when animals, other animals, have to act on reflex and respond to their environment very quickly without this thinking about the consequences. That's the parts of the brain that we have inherited from our other animal ancestors. But then we start evolve this larger layer, this cortex, which allows us to feel those impulses, but then decide whether we want to act on them or not. And that gives us more control over our behavior. But it also gives us more responsibility. We're more responsible for actions.

• 10:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Doctor, I must ask, as in life or in sport, the ability to have unbreakable concentration is, is vital in certain moments. Why is it that some people have it and some people just get distracted by anything and everything?

• 11:10Heather Berlin?

  It really has a lot to do with that ability to have cognitive control.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 11:15Heather Berlin?

  There's a part of the brain called the answer, a singular, uh, singulate that has to do with like when there's conflict, when there's different things that you can pay attention to. Some people are able to tune it out and remain focused. But if you don't have a lot of cognitive control, you haven't exercised these parts of your brain, or you just happen to be genetically born with, you know, wired differently, or a smaller prefrontal cortex, or answer a singulate, you have a more difficult time tuning out the noise so that you can focus on the signal. So it's like people with ADHD, they get very easily distracted.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  Hello.

• 11:46Heather Berlin?

  And I, yeah, the people who are-

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  Squirrel, squirrel.

• 11:50Heather Berlin?

  But yeah, I mean, that, the thing, I think that the people who are elite sports players might be the types of people that have a greater ability to do that. And then they go on to sort of perfect that skill.

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Heather Berlin?

  So if you're just so distracted all the time, you might be really good athletically, physically, but you're not able to keep your head in the game and you won't make it to those elite levels.

• 12:09Chuck Nice?

  That is absolutely true. Why is concentrating so exhausting? Take, uh, take, speaking as somebody who suffers off the charts ADHD, off, I mean, literally off the charts.

• 12:23Chuck Nice?

  Uh, you know, when I concentrate for long periods of time, I'm literally fit, I am physically tired when it's over. What, what is happening?

• 12:33Heather Berlin?

  So because it's an active process, it's your prefrontal cortex has to be activated to decrease the activation that's happening in those subcortical, like animalistic areas. And it's a constant process. And the second you let go of that, you, you let go of that suppression by the prefrontal cortex, it allows all the impulses to come up. So for example, if you're sleep deprived, if you're, you're hungry, um, if you've been drinking, all of those things lower the prefrontal cortex activation and allow these impulses to kind of take over. Right? But if you're somebody who is prone to, um, let's say your limbic system is louder and stronger than some other people, so it's harder for you to control it. It takes more cognitive energy and therefore you're more tired at the end of the day.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  I'm a caveman.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, she just called you a reptile.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  That's what I said, I'm a, I'm a dumbass caveman, that's what it is.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reptilian caveman. You're not even a caveman, you're a reptile.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  That's true, that's true.

• 13:27Heather Berlin?

  I think there's nothing wrong with that.

• 13:28Chuck Nice?

  I'm a sleep stack.

• 13:31Heather Berlin?

  But let me say one thing, let me say one caveat. Some people who have the opposite problem when they're over controlled, when they have too much prefrontal cortex activation of other types of problems. They ruminate a lot, they're over anxious, they can barely function because they keep thinking about the potential negative consequences of things. And therefore, they can't be spontaneous. So and they're inflexible. So there can be problems on the other side of the spectrum as well. It's all about balance.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right.

• 13:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Is there a way that you can balance? Or are you just stuck with whatever you've got?

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Hmm, interesting.

• 14:04Heather Berlin?

  Therapy, um, no.

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Look at that, nice little plug for Heather's business. There you go.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  Are you having trouble concentrating?

• 14:19Heather Berlin?

  But everybody, if you think of it like your genetics predict like what your your boundaries are, where you're at. And then with therapy or practice, you can get to a higher or lower level within your genetic bounds, right? So Chuck, for example, if you if you lean more on the sort of impulsive spontaneous side, which is good because it helps with, you know, being a good comedian. But maybe for other things, it's not that helpful.

• 14:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like marriage.

• 14:48Heather Berlin?

  You can you can work on being more consciously like cognizant of those behaviors. And it just takes more work for you to think about it and then actively sort of engage your prefrontal cortex to suppress some of those impulses.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, Heather, did you imply that since alcohol is one of several factors that could disrupt the ability of your frontal cortex to tamp down your limbic?

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  Impulses.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Impulses. That when you see bar fights break out, it's because people's frontal.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prefrontal cortex was losing control over the reptilian urges. And if that's the case, does that imply that were it not for our prefrontal cortex, we would all just be bar fighting all the time?

• 15:40Heather Berlin?

  Pretty much, yes.

• 15:43Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, if you look at patients that have damage to their prefrontal cortex or brain lesions, it expresses itself in different ways. It's not always physical violence, but it could be that they have these verbal outbursts. You know, they're just, they don't have any filter on what they say or they engage other impulsive acts like that would get them into trouble that if they otherwise had a prefrontal cortex, you know, they wouldn't do, just like this, all the stupid things you do if you've ever been drunk.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 16:11Heather Berlin?

  You know, all those things are normally suppressed by the prefrontal cortex. But when you lower that inhibition, it allows all these basal, basic impulses to come out. So whether it's alcohol, brain damage.

• 16:21Chuck Nice?

  Well, look at that. I have brain damage and I'm drunk right now.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means it's time to take a break.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, when we return in this first interlude for StarTalk Sports Edition, we're talking about the power of mind, not to move objects, but to focus and to concentrate and to perform. When we return, we're going to find out what role your ego plays in this and more with Heather Berlin. I want to call her our special guest, but she's like a regular guest. So our beloved guest, Heather Berlin, neuroscientist, when we return.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back with StarTalk Sports Edition. How the focus of mind can enhance or subtract from any attempt to perform at your peak, be it in everyday life or in any sports venue. And we've got Heather Berlin, our resident neuroscientist as our guest today. So Heather, when people have egos.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is, they think, maybe they think exactly what they should of themselves, but often when we say someone's got an ego, they think more highly of themselves. Can that have a benefit to their performance? Is this something that, that can manifest in, in, when it's game time, under pressure? Does it work in reverse?

• 18:04Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. If you don't think you're good, do you end up performing worse than you can or should have? Just wondering.

• 18:11Heather Berlin?

  This is a very complex question, actually, and it touches upon some Freudian things as well. But, so, you know, when we say ego, you can think of it like it's your sense of self, right? And some people can have an inflated sense of self. Some people can, can have a low sense of self and, and devalue themselves. You know, the ideal is to be somewhere in the middle. Now, to have self-confidence is positive, right? So I think that will help your performance, to feel, I'm gonna go out there and I know I can do this. I've done this before. And sort of like positive self-talk and self-confidence is good. But when you get to these people with the inflated ego, there's something called a vulnerable narcissist. And these are people that have a lot of bluster,

• 18:56Heather Berlin?

  but it's really to cover up their insecurity and vulnerability.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 19:00Heather Berlin?

  And so I, when somebody is too over the top about themselves, to me, that is a sign that they're actually very insecure. So the secure people with a very healthy ego, don't, don't have, don't have to over-advertise it. They just have a sense of like, almost peace and stability within themselves.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather,

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  are there tools of the psychologist, psychiatrist, to manage a person's ego? Or is it, do you just talk them down from that? And, and you have to talk people up if they think lowly of themselves, right?

• 19:36Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what are your tactics?

• 19:38Heather Berlin?

  Okay, so there are a couple of things. First of all, when you get people on really high on the narcissist scale, they're very difficult to treat. And there's something called narcissistic personality disorder, which basically is a lifetime disorder. And they often don't come for treatment because they don't think they have a problem. Everyone else, they have a problem, but they don't.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 19:54Heather Berlin?

  So they don't want to change. So they're very difficult to treat. It's easier to lift someone up who has low self-esteem, but...

• 20:03Heather Berlin?

  You know, one thing that what we do work with people on is when they want to keep their head in the game, whether it's playing a game or giving a talk or whatever, is to, when you're in the moment, to become less self-aware. So there's a part of your brain, this dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, that has to do with your sense of self. And if you're trying to perform and you're constantly thinking, how am I doing? How am I throwing the ball? What are people thinking? That messes up your performance. And so the cool idea is to try to decrease your sense of self and be really in the flow state and be in the moment, and then you perform your best.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  That's what, I guess that's why a lot of coaches will tell you, and they don't mean it as a cliche, go have fun. Like, get out there and play the game and have fun. Because in doing so, you take yourself out of that equation. If you're just really enjoying yourself, you're probably gonna have a pretty good perfor- a very good performance.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, the word flow is a big word today in everything.

• 20:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you know the one thing, Neil?

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 20:58Gary O'Reilly?

  That you'll hear an athlete say, quite often a basketball player, get out of your own head.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Right? And this is-

• 21:06Heather Berlin?

  Get out of your own way.

• 21:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And your roadblocks are up here. Because you've done everything you need to do to be an elite athlete. What's going on must be between your ears. So it's that, oh, I missed this free shot before. Oh, I didn't make that putt. Oh, we didn't play well here last time I played it. Everything comes in here. And, Doctor, how do you deconstruct that? How do you get that baggage out of that person's mind? And it could be a lawyer, like I say, a first responder. How do you remove that baggage and successfully leave it to one side?

• 21:37Heather Berlin?

  It's a little counterintuitive, because the moment you say to somebody, don't think about those negative thoughts, they're just gonna keep thinking about the negative. It's like someone who has insomnia, and they keep thinking, I can't sleep, I can't sleep, why can't I sleep? Right? What you have to do is think of something else besides sleep, get distracted, you know, read a book, and then you accidentally fall asleep. But the more you think about not doing it, the harder it gets. And so if you can kind of- Distract yourself, or one, one strategy is, let's say it's a big game. So just pretend it's a practice, you know, okay, this is just, you know, like I would do it. Cause that takes the pressure off and then decreases all the negative thoughts. Or for example, academically, I, I remember, you know, there was a couple of classes you could take pass fail.

• 22:19Heather Berlin?

  And I always would get like an A in those classes because I didn't like care as much.

• 22:24Chuck Nice?

  What a waste.

• 22:25Heather Berlin?

  I know, what, oh wait, it happened to me once, I'll never forget it. That's why I'm talking about it here, this is therapy. But you know, the one class I decided to take.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us about it, Heather, tell us.

• 22:35Heather Berlin?

  I had an A minus in the one I took for credit and an A in the pass fail one. And I was so frustrated, but you know, the less you.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  Well, let's explore that, Heather, how did that really make you feel?

• 22:51Heather Berlin?

  Very disappointed in myself.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yeah, you should be.

• 22:55Heather Berlin?

  That was environmental health and the other was adolescent health. And I'm not going to tell you which was what, but I was very disappointed in myself.

• 23:02Gary O'Reilly?

  So you mentioned, you, you mentioned environmental because we've discussed here what goes on here, right? By dealing with what goes on in here. What if, and you, I find it now in, in the modern stadiums that have been constructed, particularly for my sports soccer, football, if you wish. Player lounges that they can go and sit in before they, they start, before kickoff. Are constructed to give psychological boosts. It might be through subliminal paneling in the shape of a hexagon. It might be through colorways, it might be through lighting. Now, is this hogwash and it's just the emperor's new clothes? Or actually does this provide the psychological boost everybody is hoping it will?

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that related to feng shui where just the feeling of a space can affect you emotionally?

• 23:48Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so, so I don't know the specifics about those particular rules, but I do know that the environment can definitely affect your mood and your behavior. And we've all experienced that, you know, sometimes like at schools now, they have some, um, at my kid's school, they have something called the Zen Den. And if a kid is feeling stressed.

• 24:06Chuck Nice?

  Whoa, nice. Now, let me tell you something, that's a rich white school right there.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  And I'm telling you right now.

• 24:18Chuck Nice?

  You ain't stepping into no schools in the hood where they're like, okay, Jamal? You need to go to the Zen Den right now, Jamal, okay? All right.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much you paying for that school, Heather?

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody's making too much money in her practice.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My kids, it was a timeout in the corners. It's becoming Zen Den. Okay, go on.

• 24:51Heather Berlin?

  But the point is that, you know, or if you, if you, well, I don't know if you've ever gone to a spa or someone, you know, you go to a place, the music, the lighting, the furniture, the feeling.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The smells, yeah.

• 25:01Heather Berlin?

  Because your brain is taking in all these sensory information. I mean, it's black in such a brain. It doesn't see or hear or feel anything. It's just getting these sensory signals and creating a perception, interpreting what your mood should be. So if it's getting a lot of loud noises and screaming and yelling, it's going to affect your brain in a certain way. If it's having soothing, you know, calm, it will, your brain will interpret like, oh, I am in a safe environment. Everything is okay. There's no need to have to put my fight or flight system, you know, into effect. Right? And so these environments do have an impact. Now, whether it's, you know, is it this color or that color or whatnot, you know? I don't know the specifics, but I do know the environment certainly has an impact on how you feel and how you behave.

• 25:40Chuck Nice?

  That's funny because I read an article about psychological torture. So in America, we're not supposed to psychologically, we're not supposed to torture anybody, like, you know, enhanced interrogation. But what they found was what they could do is take the environment in which a detainee is held and make it so disconcerting that it would screw with their head and that they would begin to want to tell you anything, just not to be in this place anymore. So they would like make the walls different sizes at different places so that there was no symmetry

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  or they would use certain color schemes or, I mean, I, you know, I didn't know if that stuff was real, but.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Gary, did they do this to the opponent's locker room?

• 26:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, um, they can do. So there's, there was one. There was one team we played, uh, they're in the Premier League right now, Leeds United. They have, they still have a rather old stadium. When you went to the visiting team's locker room, dressing room, right? There were no toilet facilities in that area. You had to walk out of the locker room, down a corridor and into a more public toilet facility. So it was all psychological.

• 26:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's screwing with your ego right there.

• 27:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, that's just, you know what? You need to do, use the bathroom, whatever it is. It was everything that was done to try and just tweak your performance and take it down.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so Heather, Heather, in that, okay, Heather.

• 27:15Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 27:16Heather Berlin?

  Neil.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, at what point does it take you down? And at what point does it boost you back up? Because I tell this story and I'm gonna say it again here and now. A friend of my father's, my father ran track. A friend of his, um, they ran for the Pioneer Club, which, um, posted the blacks and Jews who were not admitted to the New York Athletic Club. Okay. A friend of his, Johnny Johnson, one of his black friends, ran.

• 27:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, you didn't have to say black with a name like Johnny Johnson.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was, I kept, okay. He's coming around the backstretch and there's a runner from the New York Athletic Club, several paces behind him, going into the straightaway. The coach for the New York Athletic Club runs down the line, said, this is like in the 1950s, says to him, catch that nigger. And my father's friend overheard this and said, this is one nigger he ain't gonna catch.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just extended his lead. And so, so, so in terms of motivating forces, you could think you're beating someone down.

• 28:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're just making them mad and you make, and now they, now they wanna beat you all the more. So can you know in advance which, which is which?

• 28:31Heather Berlin?

  Mm hmm. It really depends on the individual and what motivates them.

• 28:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Heather Berlin?

  Right?

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 28:37Heather Berlin?

  So somebody could hear that and get really defeated by it if they have maybe some low self-esteem.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 28:43Heather Berlin?

  Feeling insecure and then they hear that and then that, you know, just completely crushes them. And they feel that, oh, maybe I can't do it, right? But it sounds like, you know, your dad had. Had a high, you know, sense of self.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His whole generation, I mean, he would have responded the same way, for sure.

• 29:00Heather Berlin?

  Self-worth and, and so that is motivating, right? So it can hit people in different ways depending on what their underlying sort of psychological profile is.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because then it can land differently in different people.

• 29:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, this is, this is the whole basis of trash talking.

• 29:16Chuck Nice?

  Let's also keep in mind, it was the 50s. Nothing would make a black man run faster than hearing a white man behind him screaming the N-word.

• 29:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Well Chuck, I mean, how often, how often do you hear stories, right? Oh, there is.

• 29:34Gary O'Reilly?

  What it is. But this is, this, Doc, this is the basis of trash talking. I mean, I've seen head coaches before a game try and trash talk some of my teammates. Now, he didn't realize just how quick and sharp they were. And these were black players with attitude and they tore him to pieces before the game. And they just came and said, that joker just tried to trash talk us. What an idiot.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are we gonna do about it?

• 30:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Really, no, it's like, we are gonna so destroy this team today. And this is, this is the way it spins itself around. And some people, if, if you know the characteristic of certain individuals on the other team, you will go there. You will go there knowing that that will destroy their performance levels enough for you to find them as a weakness and exploiter.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you learn to never trash talk Michael Jordan.

• 30:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, or Kobe. Who was the guy that we had on? But he tells the story of how Kobe scored 50 because before the game, this other player was talking a bunch of smack to him. And Kobe was silent the entire time that he was talking the smack.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was saving it up.

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  He was saving it up. And then when the game started, Kobe got the opening jump ball, went down, shot, all net, turned to them and went 48.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, no, he didn't. And then the next time he scored, he went forty-six. No, he didn't. And he counted backwards from fifty and ended up scoring fifty in that game. Oh, man. Oh, man.

• 31:10Heather Berlin?

  Anger is a motivator, right? So if somebody, you know, insults you and you and that gives you fire in your belly, that can motivate you, you know, kind of like a revenge or I'll show them. But I think the best kind of, well, not that I want to teach people how to psychological torture, but.

• 31:27Gary O'Reilly?

  However, however.

• 31:32Heather Berlin?

  But if you really want to disturb your teammates, instead of insulting them, which could motivate them, you know, like we've just shown, is to give them very, um, it's a subtle manipulation. It's an uncomfortable environment, you know, like we're talking about. Have it be, you know, they, they, they fly, you know, in the uncomfortable plane seats. And then they're in these rooms that are like small and claustrophobic and they're asymmetrical. And there's loud noises and bright lights and all these things that set off your nervous system to destabilize you. So when you're uncomfortable or uncertain, uncertain about things, that makes people destabilized and can sub their performance.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that was a big, a major plot point in the movie Major League, where the, the owner didn't want to win the championship. So she would move from Cleveland, Ohio, and she made him take buses instead of the planes, took off, took away the hot water in the, in the club, in the clubhouse, and started diminishing their perks. And that just got him angry at that point, but, but it's a movie.

• 32:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. But you see, what Chuck was relaying there about Kobe Bryant, A, it's the motivation to turn it into, what is a negative to turn it into a positive. But you talked earlier on, Doctor, about the cortex overriding certain decision-making that was prehistoric. And for him to be able to go, I got this and be in total control.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there it is.

• 33:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Is this real smart in-game intelligence that you find some elite athletes just can dial up instantly, just like Kobe Bryant.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In our next segment, we're gonna take a break, but we're gonna talk about in-game intelligence.

• 33:13Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And intuition and other things that look natural. And is it learned? Is it just practice? Is it they're born with it? We're gonna find that out when we return with Heather Berlin talking about focus of mind in life and especially in sports on StarTalk.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, third and final segment with our guest, Heather Berlin, neuroscientist and friend of StarTalk. And of course, I got Chuck and Gary. Heather, are you active on social media? What are you up to?

• 33:53Heather Berlin?

  I am. I am on Twitter and Instagram, Heather underscore Berlin.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and thank you. So Heather, we want to learn about sort of court intuition, field intuition, or intelligence, sports IQ, if you want to call it that. And is there anything we should know or be able to think about this? Holding aside that there's a racist dimension to this occasionally, okay? Do you remember Jeremy Lin, the basketball player?

• 34:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Lin-sanity!

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lin-sanity, okay? He was really good on the court and had some very high-scoring games, and he played for eight seasons or something, mostly with the New York Knicks. The newscasters kept saying, oh, he has that, look at that court IQ that he has, and he's a smart, but everyone talked about how smart he is. Whereas there are black players who could easily outperform him and no one ever says they have high court IQ. So this is a bias that is deep within our culture. Look at that. If a black athlete performs, it's natural, whereas if a white athlete, or especially Asian in this case, performs, well, they've studied it and they're a student of the field and they

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  have an IQ. So, holding all of that aside, because that's a separate show if we were going to go there, I don't like playing the race card like Chuck always does. Of course. Okay? Jeremy Lin, look at him, just doing geometry to sink those buckets. Geometry, right. Yeah, but all the other black players that are stinking the same buckets, they're not doing geometry, apparently. Exactly. This is natural. So, what I want to ask you is, the people who seem to just know and anticipate, and they're all in, can you learn that? It seems to me if you could learn it, then everyone would have it. Right. But everyone doesn't have it. So maybe there's something not. There's gotta be something that sets those guys apart. Right.

• 35:54Heather Berlin?

  So, what I would say is this, it's actually, it can't be learned specifically, but it can by proxy. And by that I mean, there's such a complex skillset that you can't think about it consciously. So what the players do, what I think is happening is, when you practice so much, that, because your unconscious can process much more information than consciousness. Consciousness is very limited. So if you had to think at every moment, what angle should I hit that ball into the net at? And what exactly? You couldn't do it. But if you had enough practice, your unconscious had enough information to be able to do all the calculations and figure out where should I be on the court, who should I pass it to, without you having

• 36:38Heather Berlin?

  to consciously think about it. That's the skillset. It's when it's so over rehearsed that things start to become implicit, that you have a kind of intelligence, but it's not a conscious one. It's unconscious.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I just want to repeat what you said. You said, your unconscious awareness. Can be aware of way more that's going on than your conscious awareness. So the more you can hammer what is might be a difficult task to learn, the more you can hammer that, tamp that into your subconscious, the more effective you'll be in your venue. Is that a fair?

• 37:13Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. So that's the same thing with what the improvisers, learning an instrument. Practice, practice, practice, learn all the skills and the intricacies, and then relegate it to your unconscious where you can make beautiful, you know, improvised music. But the best improvisers are the ones that have practiced the actual, you know, skills the most. Relegate it to the unconscious and let the unconscious take it away and do what it wants. But the moment you start thinking too much about it, you actually limit yourself.

• 37:41Gary O'Reilly?

  See, this, this, this, this I can actually relate to. Not because I was an elite athlete, but.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not because you don't think, right?

• 37:47Gary O'Reilly?

  But that as well. But you see, the things, if you've got the toolkit as a skill set and it's, it's got so many different things for the solutions, the, the problems you have in front of you, you know, you've got that. That's a real confidence boost. Going back to what we were talking about earlier on, you don't have to have that self doubt. You know, you've got this no matter what comes at you. Then you're using your own sight to be able to analyze what it is that has to happen, the situation you're in, and then you improvise that skill to deliver something, maybe a three point shot, maybe a two point shot, maybe a sneaky little pass that no one else but you has seen because you've seen a runner off to the side of the court and you put a little ball behind your back between your legs and up and over there.

• 38:31Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's like, everyone's like, wow, the only person that saw that was you and we sat up here in a crowd and we couldn't even see that ourselves. So all of this is going off at a rate of knots that is just ridiculous.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm, mm hmm.

• 38:44Heather Berlin?

  And the, the less you have to think about, the more you relegate to the unconscious, the less you have to think moment, and the more you could pay attention to other things, right?

• 38:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 38:52Heather Berlin?

  That gives you a like a greater repertoire of possible things to do.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  That makes a lot of sense because, so Odell Beckham Jr. at the time, I don't know how many years ago, made a one handed catch that was like considered one of the greatest one handed snags in all of football.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is as he fell into the.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  As he fell into the end zone and he stretched backwards and he's all, and it's just incredible to watch. But since then, one-handed catches happen three or four, three or four times a game in almost every game. They're a thing. And, and it's because all the receivers practice one-handed catches now.

• 39:36Chuck Nice?

  They all practice that. It's, it's so funny that.

• 39:40Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, it's become a tool within their toolkit. But this is, I do think the confidence comes in. For example, you know, I know it from my field academically, you know, you study years and years and years of the brain. And then you, you go into a situation and it's like, well, any question can be asked. I don't know what question, but you trust I have enough, let's say, practice or enough, I, you know, knowledge base that I'm confident that I could probably figure out an answer to something. And it's the same thing with going on in the court. You've had enough practice and experience of different moves and shots and things that you figure anything they throw at me, I'll, I'll be able to throw something out. You know, I'll have an, I'll have a response to it. And that's what I think the great athletes have is they just have, they don't have to think about the response. It just comes based on all the years of practice.

• 40:20Gary O'Reilly?

  You know, the other thing that's developed, Neil, with, with team sports, maybe basketball, definitely with NFL and in my game, my game of football is pattern recognition.

• 40:32Gary O'Reilly?

  When this, this, this happens, I know I need to be here to stop this, or I need to be here to facilitate a pass into me so I can set this other thing up. And you practice and you train, but now and again, someone comes along and just breaks the mold. But what is it, doctor, when you've got pattern recognition going on in the head? What, what makes it so sharp? And then go back to Neil's point, intuitive. You've got that history of knowledge of research and then boom, you can execute it immediately.

• 41:03Heather Berlin?

  Again, your, your brain is like a meaning maker machine and it's always looking for patterns. I mean, that's what we do every day in our life is pattern recognition. So we can predict the future, right? So if you're doing it within a particular domain of sports, you've been doing it over and over and over again. You start to get attuned to that. But what I did find, I, I, I, once in, in my career, I was doing the neuropsych testing of, of NFL players. And so both baseline and then after they have a concussion to see if they're able to go back in the game. And the interesting thing that I found not, you know, being a person who's very into sport, you know, there's this cliche that people who play sports, you know, are like jocks and not necessarily the brightest, like obviously a stereotype. And when I gave them these neuropsych tests, they performed so well.

• 41:47Heather Berlin?

  They were so good at like, at speed and accuracy of cognitive tasks, you know? And that was when I realized that that is part of the skill set. It's not just the physical prowess. These people are really smart and capable and, and, and that's part of being a good athlete.

• 42:04Gary O'Reilly?

  It's not an academic smartness, is it doctor? There's another, there's this game intelligence, there's this will.

• 42:09Chuck Nice?

  I would, I would say that there, it is an academic smartness, simply be, it's just applied to the game. Because I don't know if anybody's ever seen an NFL playbook, but it, it looks like the kind of stuff Neil and his brood write up on chalkboards. It's ridiculous.

• 42:26Heather Berlin?

  Well, but let me see the difference between academic, academic tests, which are knowledge of facts, how much you know, you know about history and whatever. Um, and if you haven't had a certain type of education, you might not do well on those tasks, right? You haven't been exposed to that information.

• 42:38Gary O'Reilly?

  That's what I really meant, that kind of.

• 42:40Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, well, when these kinds of tests, these neuropsych tests are kind of like, or IQ tests, you can't study for them. They're based on basically like, um, mental rotation of shapes. But you know, those skill sets are, are natural abilities of the brain. Those are the kinds of things we're looking at, speed, how fastly can you trace this thing, you know? Um, and, and or fluidity, mental fluidity, and, and they score really high on these kinds of things.

• 43:04Gary O'Reilly?

  So could, could, if you were able to develop and sharpen your intuition as an athlete, as a team sport, would that be a benefit to take that kind of application into other professions? To, to enhance the performances of, of doctors, lawyers, surgeons, etc.

• 43:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, oh.

• 43:24Heather Berlin?

  You know, uh, I would say this, unfortunately, there's no sort of quick fix. The best way to sharpen your intuition is with experience. And ultimately it's wisdom. So if in my field, if I. Seen enough patients and enough, you know, um, I can read people very quickly because of years of experience in practice.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 43:46Heather Berlin?

  And I think then you get a sense of intuition. Intuition is your unconscious feeding up, serving up to your consciousness, information.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 43:54Heather Berlin?

  It's saying, or there's, you know, I'm not consciously thinking about it. Something will pop up and be, oh, that's a red flag on that person, or I think they might have OCD or whatever it is. And the same thing in sports. It's years of experience that it helped you sharpen that intuition and know what the right move is at the right time.

• 44:08Gary O'Reilly?

  I agree. Very cool. You know, that's, you know, rookie, rookie mistakes because they've not had enough game time to be able to know that that thing is about to happen.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's why they call it rookie mistakes.

• 44:19Heather Berlin?

  In sports, the problem is, which is different than some maybe, you know, other professions, is that as you get older and have more experience, your intuition gets better, but your physical ability can start to decrease, right? So, you know, you might be better in certain ways, but not in others. But in, in, in other professions, you know, you, you don't have that downside.

• 44:38Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah, that's why, that's why you want, that's why you like it when your doctor is older, you know, because you know that that doctor has a lot more experience.

• 44:46Gary O'Reilly?

  So the thing is, Doctor, when you, what you've just described, the athlete that's aging, but the game experience and the intuition is rising, a great athlete remains great by adapting and surviving. They know they no longer have foot speed, or they no longer have certain aspects, so they load other areas to compensate for what is diminishing. And you see it so often. And I think with medical science and with the actual understanding of how to develop mental skills and strengths, players like LeBron James going deep into their thirties and still being almost at the top of their.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't he already forty, LeBron?

• 45:24Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't wanna, I, he's too big for me to, to get his age wrong.

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought he was forty, maybe not, maybe not. Heather, there's something that we haven't discussed, but I think it relates to all of this. At one point in our conversation, we said that to, to relieve some of your stress, just go out and make believe it's practice. You're just having practice, just go have fun.

• 45:48Heather Berlin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, in sports where you can set a world record.

• 45:54Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is stress in the final race, in the final contest, that pushes you beyond any limit your body, mind has ever seen. And typically, that doesn't, that won't happen in practice.

• 46:13Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, something is going on in the heads of people to do something that not only has no one else done before, neither has their own body done before.

• 46:24Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 46:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's going on inside the head of someone that can go beyond themselves?

• 46:30Heather Berlin?

  It's, I think that's something that you can't necessarily consciously control. So, all these other factors are coming into play. Let's say it's, you know, it's the Olympics and you're running that final race. And just being in that environment, you know, with the audience and the lights and the camera, whatever is there, is motivating your body. I mean, we see this in cockroaches when they...

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me tell you something, you cockroach.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, okay, so I was not expecting that. No one was. Okay, sorry, sorry.

• 47:10Heather Berlin?

  There's something called the social facilitation effect. Even in other animals, when a cockroach will run a certain speed, and when it's in the presence of other cockroaches, like observing it, it will run faster.

• 47:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 47:25Heather Berlin?

  Now, I don't know that it's consciously making that decision. And, and we all know this, and somehow we perform differently when we're alone versus if we know other people watching us. And you're not consciously saying, "I'm gonna perform differently because..." But, but this input is getting into your brain. It's telling you, "This is important," or "I wanna impress these people," whatever it may be.

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 47:43Heather Berlin?

  Um, and it encourages you to go beyond these limits. But there's nothing you, you can tell yourself to make yourself do it. It's almost like you, you have to get all your skills and have everything ready to go and just trust your body knows what it's doing. And one example I'll use is, um, you know, a friend told me this once, we were running, we were going down a mountain. We were like going down and I was like so nervous and taking it step by step. And, you know, and he was just going really quick. And he said, you gotta just not think about it. Just let your body go and it knows what it's doing. And you'll get down safer that way. And there was

• 48:16Chuck Nice?

  And those were the last words he ever spoke. As I watched him tumble away.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was never seen

• 48:22Chuck Nice?

  He was never seen again.

• 48:26Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the other thing, doctor, it's a competitive streak in an individual. And then you hear other phrases. And the one that sounds stupid, but actually does have some credence to it is winners find a way of winning. Because that's what they want to do. That's what's going on in their mind. The other ones are things like the bigger the game, the big players turn up. And they bring a big performance with them. They don't cower in the corner and they have this ability to rise to an occasion. They, I mean, the other mantra you'll hear is if you're playing in a big set piece game, don't play the game, not the occasion. So they take away all the peripheral hype and drama and noise.

• 49:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That won't always be good, based on what Heather just told us.

• 49:13Gary O'Reilly?

  I know.

• 49:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna be, your other roaches are looking at you.

• 49:16Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, but then, but then you see, you've got these other competitive streaks. Now, I didn't turn up because I wanna go home a loser. I turned up because I wanna win. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered getting out of bed. And it's this sort of attitude that you find, I mean, maybe it's higher, stronger within certain individuals that rise to the very top of the sports. And in life.

• 49:36Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, what you're talking about is something, a concept we call mindset. Right? And there's a lot of studies that someone named Carol Dweck has done a lot of work on this. But when you have a particular mindset, it can affect so many things down to your basic physiology. So this, this one study looked at people who were cleaners at hotels. And they would always be tired at the end of the day. And they measured all their physiology, their body weight and, you know, BMI and the rest of it. And then they started putting up these signs in the break room, saying that that, that cleaning is really good exercise and it's really good for you. And it actually like burns calories and all these things. And they changed their mindset about the work. And then Their physiologic measures started to improve. They were doing the same amount of work.

• 50:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 50:21Heather Berlin?

  And there's a number of studies like this. But the point is that if you go into a situation saying, I'm a winner, and you have this goal in mind and this foresight, and then your body kind of comes along to meet that expectation. Right? If you really believe it, if you really, and you compete with yourself. Most of the best athletes are trying to beat their own record. It's not as much about the other person, about beating their own. You know, Kobe Bryant or whatnot was probably just trying to beat himself. Right? And that continues to motivate you and keep you at the top of the game. But really having a goal and trusting that somehow your brain and body will find a way to get there. And that's a positive mindset.

• 51:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Yep. All right, well, we gotta call it quits there. What, that was a chock full episode. Man. My, my brain is still digesting all that, plus the roaches. I gotta, I gotta think about that one.

• 51:14Gary O'Reilly?

  And don't forget, Neil, never take a lizard into a bar and get it drunk.

• 51:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Oh, that was the lesson of the segment one, wasn't it?

• 51:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Lesson.

• 51:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't get lizards drunk. That's the worst, worst thing. Well, Heather, it's been a delight to have you back on StarTalk. Thanks for being such a loyal friend of the show, serving us up your expertise when and where we need it. And Gary, Chuck, always good to have you guys there. Pleasure, Neil. Pleasure. All right, this has been StarTalk Sports Edition, an episode on the focus of mind. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.