My guest is Dr. Jennifer Groh, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. She explains how our brain encodes sights and sounds and integrates them so we can navigate and understand the world around us. She explains what thoughts really are and how what you focus on determines your thoughts, not just in that moment but your future thoughts too. We discuss this in the context of how to improve your level of focus and happiness and how to complete tasks and task-switch more effectively. We also discuss how you can rewire the neural circuits that underlie your default patterns of thinking and attention. Sponsors AGZ by AG1: https://drinkagz.com/huberman Lingo: https://hellolingo.com/huberman Wealthfront*: https://wealthfront.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 0:00 Jennifer Groh 3:41 Sounds & Vision, Sensory Integration; Dynamic Maps 7:42 Context & Mapping; Screens, Projection & Perception, Ventriloquists 13:52 Sound Localization 16:53 Sponsors: Lingo & Wealthfront 19:50 Hearing Loss & Sound Localization, Ear Folds 21:56 Unfamiliarity of Hearing Your Own Voice; Tool: Bone Conduction Headphones 26:16 Tool: Headphone Volume & Protecting Hearing 28:57 3D Sound, Sound Distance, Thunder, Earthquakes 37:24 Sound Integration; Sound Frequency & Distance, Warning Signals 44:36 Sponsors: AGZ by AG1 & Our Place 47:39 Music, Rhythm, Community & Emotion 57:00 Music, Military; Courtship; Evolution of Music & Language 1:02:37 Ears, Visual & Auditory Integration, Sound Localization 1:09:48 Evolution of Visual & Auditory Systems, Music; Brain Controlling Vision 1:15:17 Sponsor: Helix Sleep 1:16:45 Physical Space & Sounds; Cathedrals, Sound Delay 1:22:37 Music, Emotion & Community; Science & Admitting Weakness 1:27:01 Thinking & Sensory Simulations; Forming Thoughts 1:33:18 Attention, Attractor States, Flow States, Tool: Changing Environment 1:37:38 Sounds & Environment for Focus, Attention, Tool: Mental Interval Training 1:44:37 Sponsor: LMNT 1:45:58 Endurance & Interval Mental Work; Mental Rest, Music 1:50:37 Musician, Rehearsal & Performance; Pressure 1:54:16 Chickens; Hypnotizing Chickens, Visual Attention & Focus 2:03:47 Relaxation, Phones & Schools, Boredom, Social Media 2:12:48 Acknowledgements 2:13:58 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter *This experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.Ā Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The base APY is 3.50% on cash deposits as of November 07, 2025, is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum. If eligible for the overall boosted rate of 4.15% offered in connection with this promo, your boosted rate is also subject to change if the base rate decreases during the 3 month promo period. Funds in the Cash Account are swept to program banks, where it earns the variable APY. New Cash Account deposits are subject to a 2-4 day holding period before becoming available for transfer. Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Securities investments: not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
What goes on in our brains when we think might be that we're running simulations. related to the thought using that sensory motor infrastructure of the brain.
Could you elaborate?
So the theory is that like maybe when you think about a cat, for example, or you think the concept of a cat, that the mental instantiation of that or the brain mechanism instantiation of having that thought is to run a little simulation in visual cortex that kind of includes what a cat looks like. A simulation in auditory cortex that what does the cat sound like?
And as I'm telling you this, I've used the word cat. What color cat are you thinking?
I'm thinking of a gray cat, but I keep smelling kitty litter. Okay. Because my sister had cats, and the smell of kitty litter is just so aversive to me.
Right? And so you had no hesitation in telling me the color and adding an additional sensory quality. It provides an explanation for why you might be ā Driving on the freeway and having to merge into difficult traffic and telling your passenger, okay, be quiet, I've got to pay attention now. Like, why would speech impair you from visual motor if it wasn't all part of a kind of cognitive system?
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Groh. Dr. Jennifer Groh is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.
Her laboratory studies how our brain represents the world around us, in particular, how our different senses are merged in the brain so that we can focus and learn more effectively, including how our eye movements fundamentally shape not just what we pay attention to, but how they dynamically control what our brain is capable of.
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Chapter 2: How do our brains integrate sensory information?
Are there conditions where we think we hear something from one location, but it's actually arising from another location that's outside an experimental context?
Absolutely. So if you have hearing loss in one ear and one ear only, then it's very difficult to localize sound. It's not completely impossible. You would imagine that it would be completely impossible if the hearing loss was complete and if this timing difference and level difference were the only cues that we use.
But actually, the ear has these little folds in them, and the folds filter the sound as it comes in. And in particular, it alters the frequency content of the sound.
Really? So these little dimples inside my ears are useful for something.
They're useful and your ears are different than my ears. And so you are going to be expecting a slightly different kind of fingerprint of what the sound sounds like as a function of location than I would be.
Do people with damage to their ears... have issues hearing. I mean, it sounds like sort of a, they must, but like the people I know that roll jujitsu, the wrestlers, their ears are always beat up. They basically don't have these folds. It's just kind of, yeah.
Interesting. I don't know of any studies, but I think we can predict from first principles that they would have an initial deficit and that very likely they would learn to adapt and they would kind of learn their new set of ears and what particular frequency pattern to expect from that.
If the auditory system is so sensitive... Why is it that I don't really hear my own voice? Or if I talk out one side of my mouth, I sort of know what I'm doing, but it doesn't throw me off. It doesn't throw me off. And yet, most people have the experience of... watching themselves or hearing themselves speak and it feels awkward.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What role does the superior colliculus play in sensory processing?
But then when it's coming at us from the front, it's like, it's odd. It's weird.
Do you like listening to this podcast?
Well, I listen to all the podcasts to see ways that I can improve. Yeah. And I like the content that my guests bring on and I like the topics.
But it's an awkward feeling, isn't it?
Oh, it's always awkward.
To listen to yourself is very awkward.
Yeah, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable.
Before I answer that question, which is a really interesting question, I want to loop back to the, do we have to learn this? The other thing to say about learning, learning how to interpret these, the timing difference cues and the level difference cues is, is that a baby's head is about half the width of an adult's head.
So that means that that half millisecond for me is a quarter of a millisecond for a baby, and it's going to change as they grow. So that's why you have to do all this learning. With respect to the question you just asked about like why our voices sound weird, I can say more about why they sound weird and less about why we experience it as kind of unpleasant.
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Chapter 4: How do eye movements affect auditory perception?
It's just that we're projecting it outward.
Well, we're projecting it outward and our brain is turning down the volume in anticipation of what we're saying.
Got it.
So it's a very, you know, potentially it could be a very precisely timed volume knob that is going with each little word that I say.
So when the psychologists say that we can't speak and hear at the same time, they're 100% accurate.
Probably.
We can't speak and hear correctly.
We cannot. And then the third thing is that this maybe goes back to the first point about the recording doesn't capture all of it, is that some of what we are picking up is actually through bone conduction. You may have bone conduction headphones. I certainly do. These are headphones that they don't go over the ears. They don't go in the ears.
They're usually positioned right in front of the ears, delivering the vibration signals to the bone right in front of your ear. And that can get transmitted into your ears as well.
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Chapter 5: How do sensory systems relate to thought formation?
So this is just the same thing in reverse.
I think it's all part of an integrated system. You know, we talked about the top-down control over the ear, but there's a lot of top-down control over vision, too. And some of it is a little easier to understand than what I just described because blinking is top-down control over vision. Eye movements, top-down control over vision.
Focusing the lens of your eye, right, that's also top-down control. There are descending connections from the brain to the retina itself that nobody understands clearly.
apologies to the people working on this i really want you to keep working on this but i feel like there isn't a clear theory yet about what exactly these descending connections might be doing from what i know about it they are you know pretty diffuse connections pretty broad branching of of neurons uh throughout the retina or not throughout the whole retina but but
probably not well suited to manipulating fine spatial detail, but could very well be suited to incorporating some kind of circadian influence to the retina itself or something else that you want the same signal to be broadly available throughout the retina.
I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep.
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Chapter 6: What role does the environment play in attention and focus?
Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. When we aren't doing that on a consistent basis, everything suffers.
And when we are sleeping well and enough, our mental health, our physical health, and our performance in all endeavors improves markedly. Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in terms of the quality of sleep that you get each night.
how soft that mattress is, how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into how well you'll sleep, how much deep sleep you get, how much rapid eye movement sleep, and it needs to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. So if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz, and it will ask you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach?
Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?
Chapter 7: How can sound and music influence cognitive states?
Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.
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Yeah.
Recently, I was in New York, and someone took me to Grand Central. where there are these incredible arches in one of the hallways there. People should check this out. It's really, really cool.
It is beautiful.
It's beautiful. You have this high ceiling main kind of chamber room of Grand Central. There's also a hallway off to one side where you can go into a corner. Do you know about this? And you can face into the corner like you were going to, you know, like you're facing the corner in shame, but you're not. And whoever you're with can go to the opposite diagonal corner.
The ceiling is shaped like somewhat of a dome. It's contoured, but it's more or less a small dome. but you are easily 25 feet away from this person that you're there with, again, diagonal corner. And if you speak at a very, very low volume, they can hear you on the opposite side. And if they speak, you can hear them. And what's wild is there's a lot of noise in the environment.
This is Grand Central Station. And we played with this a little bit. Like if high frequency sounds do seem to travel a little bit better in this environment. Because if one person laughs, you can hear it very clearly. But you can whisper. And they're 25 feet away in a major city with a ton of city noise. Right. And so obviously the sound waves are traveling along the ceiling.
On that parabola, yeah.
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Chapter 8: What insights are gained from discussing chickens and attention?
Love San Diego, great tacos, great people, but they're always talking about tacos down there. It's so strange to be in a short day where it's hot.
Yes.
Because even if I go visit my relatives in Argentina who experience Christmas in the summer, the days are long and it's hot. And it's Christmas and Santa Claus is supposed to be in a sleigh in the snow, but that's a whole different thing.
Okay, yeah.
But there's something about the way our nervous system is mapped where we expect soft sounds to not travel very far. Sure. Sure. The opposite would be like shouting and your voice just disappears, even though the person's right in front of you. It is so weird. And I feel like people should experience this naturally occurring experiment. Yeah.
Because you walk away from that understanding sound intensity and frequency and localization completely differently. It changed the way I think about this, and it has nothing to do with being a neuroscientist. Like, that's crazy. I can hear a whisper from 25 feet away. And I wondered, is this what it's like to be a wolf? That would be really cool.
It would also be really irritating because you don't want to hear all the things that people are saying at the time.
Right. I mean, this is one of the problems with hearing aids. They amplify everything. It's not replacing what your brain does. It's not replacing what your ear normally does.
Yeah. It's such a mind bend. And it's so cool. And if you provide you're in New York, it costs nothing to do it. You just have to wait your turn. People are catching on to this or it's been known for a while. I'd like to get your thoughts on the opposite example where if you go into like a high ceiling cathedral church.
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