The Neuro Experience

Ask most people what a brain chip does and they will tell you it reads your mind. Dr. Michael Lawton implants these devices, and he says that is not what comes off them. He is President and CEO of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, the hospital where Neuralink's first human implant was performed, and he has completed more than 10,000 brain operations and clipped around 5,500 aneurysms. Louisa sat down with him inside Barrow to find out what the electrodes actually pick up, how far the technology has come, and where it stops.

He walks through the surgery itself. The device goes into the hand knob, one small lobule of the motor cortex, where 64 electrodes have already become 108. The threads carrying them are about a tenth the thickness of a hair, so a robot inserts them while avoiding every arteriole on the surface. You'll hear what Nolan Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient, can now do with a cursor at world record speed, and why Lawton can't keep up with him in a head to head.

*Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+:* https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page

Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance.

_____

*TOPICS DISCUSSED*
00:00 Intro: The Brain Surgeon at Neuralink's First Hospital
00:39 The Guy Who Does the Cases Nobody Else Wants
02:17 A Day in the Life: 5:30am Starts and Three Surgeries
03:20 "Game Tape": Reviewing Every Operation Like an Athlete
04:24 The Surgeon Athlete and Why Surgery Is a Physical Skill
05:32 Fifty Years From Now: What Happens to Neurosurgery
06:11 The ROSA Robot and Mapping a Seizure Focus
08:16 Deep Brain Stimulation and Hitting an Exact Target
08:52 Will We All Be Operated On by Robots?
10:02 The Brain AVM: The One Case a Robot Can't Take
11:18 Why Bleeding Breaks a Robot: The Waymo Problem
13:15 What a Brain-Computer Interface Actually Does
14:49 The Hand Knob: 108 Electrodes in One Small Spot
15:50 Cursor Control at World Record Speed
16:31 Inside the Implant: Threads a Tenth the Width of a Hair
17:27 "No, the Chip Cannot Read Your Thoughts"
17:58 What the Device Really Reads: A Train of Spikes
19:18 From Movement to Sensation: What Comes Next
19:48 Why Restoring Sight Is So Much Harder
20:58 The 1943 Paper That Predicted All of This
22:37 Elon, Telepathy, and What's Actually Possible
23:00 Boosting Creativity and Intelligence in 50 Years
25:10 "When I Retire, We'll Be Treating Depression and Addiction"
26:04 Alzheimer's: Light Therapy and the Blood-Brain Barrier
27:11 Treating the Disease vs Preventing It
28:25 10,000 Operations: How He Feels About Robots Taking Over
29:54 Neuroplasticity: How Nolan's Brain Learned the Device
31:34 What Actually Changes at the Neuron Level
32:04 Patient Two and the Robotic Arm
32:42 5,500 Aneurysms: The Cases That Stay With Him
33:16 Cardiac Standstill: Cooling a Brain to 15 Degrees
35:46 What Separates a Great Surgeon From an Average One
36:17 Traits of Greatness: The Formula Nobody Has Cracked
37:21 The Phone Call in the Middle of a 16-Hour Surgery
39:35 "I Must Have Been Born for This"
41:26 Can You Tell How Old a Brain Is Just by Looking?
43:12 Why Alzheimer's Is Invisible in a Living Brain
44:14 What a Neurosurgeon Does to Protect His Own Brain
44:40 "Alcohol Will Be Viewed Like Cigarettes in the 60s"
45:13 Peptides, Injectables, and Zero Supplements
46:52 The Last Generation to Operate With Open Hands
48:10 How Louisa Found Him on Twitter in 2021
48:53 The Six Mysteries of the Mind
49:14 Which One Gets Solved First, and Which May Never
50:03 Is Consciousness in the Tissue?
51:39 Memory: The Circuitry We Still Can't Explain
53:18 Why Consciousness Is Harder Than Memory
55:12 Louisa's Father's Stroke
56:02 Advice for Anyone Watching a Parent Decline
56:21 His Sister's Brain Tumor and How He Carries It
57:38 A World Where Stroke Is an Outpatient Repair
58:40 Forty Years On, Finally at the Dawn

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_______

I’m Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer’s prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics.

My mission is to translate cutting-edge neuroscience into actionable strategies for cognitive longevity, peak performance, and brain disease prevention.
If you're committed to optimizing your brain- reducing Alzheimer’s risk - and staying mentally sharp for life, you’re in the right place.

Stay sharp. Stay informed. Join thousands who subscribe to the Neuro Athletics Newsletter → https://bit.ly/3ewI5P0
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Two out of three Alzheimer's patients are women, and for decades that gap was written off as a side effect of living longer. The newer neuroscience tells a more specific story: menopause is not a reproductive event, it's a neurological one, and the pathology begins 20 to 30 years before the first symptom. In this episode, Louisa breaks down why the female brain loses its primary protection around 40, what actually drives the disease, and the seven evidence-based protections that can change the trajectory.

She starts with the estrogen shield, the four things estrogen does in the female brain that nothing else replicates: it drives mitochondrial biogenesis, suppresses amyloid plaque formation, upregulates antioxidant enzymes, and maintains white matter integrity. You'll hear why estrogen doesn't decline smoothly but swings wildly through perimenopause before dropping roughly 80% by postmenopause, what PET scans already show in women in midlife, and why a 2021 paper by Mosconi and colleagues named menopause the single strongest predictor of Alzheimer's brain changes, stronger than age, stronger than family history.

Then she turns to what you can do about it. You'll learn why resistance training, not cardio, produces the irisin and BDNF cascade that targets the exact pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's, and why two sessions a week was enough to preserve the brain regions the disease hits first. She covers the glymphatic system that clears amyloid and tau only during deep sleep, and why 70 to 80% of women in perimenopause lose exactly that sleep at exactly the wrong moment. She walks through the HRT timing fork, 32% lower risk when therapy starts within five years of menopause versus 38% higher when it starts after 65, the MIND diet's 53% risk reduction, the omega-3 dose most women get wrong by a factor of five, and the cortisol crisis that runs like a thread through every mechanism in the episode. It's not a death sentence. It's a timeline, and there is a window where the right information changes the outcome.

To sponsor an episode- https://open.substack.com/pub/neuroathletics/p/sponsor-tne

*Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+:* https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page

Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance.

_____

*TOPICS DISCUSSED*
00:00 Intro: Two Out of Three Alzheimer's Patients Are Women
00:37 The Estrogen Shield and the Four Things It Does in Your Brain
02:13 What Happens to the Brain When Estrogen Drops
03:01 The Reframe: Menopause Is a Neurological Event, Not a Reproductive One
03:31 Why Women Develop More Tau Than Men
04:15 The 20-Year Head Start: It Begins in Your 30s and 40s
05:02 When the Silent Window Collides With Perimenopause
05:44 The Symptoms Women Are Told to Dismiss
06:42 The Diagnostic Gap and the APOE4 Risk
08:59 Protection 1: Why Resistance Training Beats Cardio
09:31 Irisin, BDNF, and Fertilizer for Your Neurons
10:37 The Brain-Scan Proof: Two Sessions a Week
11:16 Why Chronic Cardio Can Work Against Your Brain
13:36 Protection 2: The Glymphatic System and Deep Sleep
14:53 How Your Brain Cleans Itself Overnight
15:56 The Sleep Collision That's Specific to Women
16:37 Why Deep Sleep Beats Total Hours
18:41 Protection 3: The HRT Timing Window
18:56 32% Lower vs 38% Higher: Same Therapy, Opposite Outcomes
20:56 The 2002 Data Still Driving the Wrong Advice
21:05 APOE4 Carriers and the Largest HRT Benefit
23:19 Protection 4: The MIND Diet and a 53% Lower Risk
24:20 The Omega-3 Dose Most Women Get Wrong
25:17 Berries, Anthocyanins, and the Foods to Cut
27:38 The Cortisol Crisis: The Thread Through Everything
28:58 The Estrogen and Cortisol Feedback Loop
30:18 The "Healthy" Routine That's Quietly Hurting Your Brain
31:08 Seven Layers, One Message: This Is Preventable

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*Thank you to our sponsors*
Function Health: https://functionhealth.com/LouisaNicola - Use code NEURO25 for a $25 credit

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Cozy Earth: https://cozyearth.com - Use code NEURO for 20% off

_______

I’m Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer’s prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics.

My mission is to translate cutting-edge neuroscience into actionable strategies for cognitive longevity, peak performance, and brain disease prevention.
If you're committed to optimizing your brain- reducing Alzheimer’s risk - and staying mentally sharp for life, you’re in the right place.

Stay sharp. Stay informed. Join thousands who subscribe to the Neuro Athletics Newsletter → https://bit.ly/3ewI5P0
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisanicola_/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/louisanicola_
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six days before he sat down for this conversation, he ran a marathon. Then he explained what the race did to his brain. When you run 26 miles and your glycogen runs out, your brain still needs energy, so it starts stripping the fatty myelin off its own neurons and burning it for fuel. MRI scans caught a 20% drop in myelin up to two months after a marathon, and cognitive testing showed real impairment for about a month. In this episode, Louisa sits down with Brady Holmer, exercise physiologist, 2:24 marathoner, and author of VO2 Max Essentials, for one of the most practical conversations on aerobic fitness, brain health, and longevity the show has recorded.

They cover why "marathon brain" is real but temporary, the menopause parallel where a starved brain catabolizes its own white matter, and whether pre-loading ketones or omega-3s can protect your myelin through a hard endurance effort. Then Brady breaks down VO2 max the way almost nobody does: not as a heart-and-lung number, but as a five-step oxygen cascade running from your lungs to your mitochondria, and why the bottleneck moves from your heart to your muscles as you age. You will learn the exact VO2 max floor below which everything becomes a maximal effort, the "50 at 50" target, and why women should aim for 40 to 50.

Brady also lays out how the brain itself gates your fitness through myokine signaling, why the one to two hours after training may matter more than sleep for adaptation, and the truth about "non-responders" and the IGF binding protein biology behind trainability. Then the protocols: why the Norwegian 4x4 beats Tabata for VO2 max, how sauna and post-exercise ketones amplify the same session, why sleep consistency beats sleep duration, and the single weekly workout Brady says everyone should be doing for both VO2 max and brain health over the next decade.

Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+: https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page

Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance.

TOPICS DISCUSSED

00:00 Intro: Marathon Brain and the Number That Predicts How Long You Live

00:40 Does Running a Marathon Really Damage Your Brain?

01:04 The Study: 20% Myelin Loss on MRI After a Marathon

02:16 Impaired Cognition for a Month, Then Full Recovery

03:28 Why It Happens: The Brain Burns Its Own Myelin for Fuel

04:44 The Menopause Parallel: Brain Glucose Starvation and White Matter

05:57 Can Ketones and BHB Protect the Brain During a Marathon?

06:42 How Marathon Runners Should Fuel to Protect Cognition

08:22 VO2 Max: The Strongest Predictor of Mortality and Longevity

09:00 The Oxygen Cascade: What VO2 Max Actually Measures

11:08 Why VO2 Max Matters More As You Age

12:10 The VO2 Max Floor for Frailty and Daily Living

13:11 VO2 Max as a Brain Metric: Averages by Age and Sex

14:20 The "50 at 50" Target and What Women Should Aim For

15:09 The Female Masters Athlete Study and the VO2 Max Bank Account

16:01 How Your Brain Knows It Is Getting Fitter: Myokines

17:41 Mouse Studies: Block the Brain Signal, Lose the Adaptation

18:37 The Post-Workout Recovery Window That Drives Adaptation

19:53 What Kind of Rest Actually Works After Training

20:50 KetoneIQ: Clean Fuel for the Brain

21:50 Qualia Magnesium: Recovery and Deep Sleep

22:45 The Mission: Why Science Is the New Breaking News

27:25 Attacking VO2 Max From a Different Angle: What Is Your Bottleneck?

28:06 Central vs Peripheral: Heart, Muscle, and Mitochondria

30:20 Spotting Mitochondrial Dysfunction With a Simple Lactate Test

33:18 Training Each Link in the Oxygen Cascade

34:41 Targeting the Lungs: Inspiratory Muscle Training

36:19 Iron, Hemoglobin, and Heat as an Altitude Mimic

38:56 Exercise Hemolysis: Why Runners Break Down Red Blood Cells

39:59 Why Investors and CEOs Are Chasing VO2 Max

40:42 What Is Good for the Heart Is Good for the Brain

42:02 Exercise Snacks vs Deliberate Training as You Age

44:41 HIIT for Stroke Volume: Why the Norwegian 4x4 Works

45:43 4x4 vs Tabata and the 2 to 8 Minute Interval Sweet Spot

46:57 Using Heart Rate and Exertion to Train VO2 Max

48:02 Where AI Is Entering Endurance Coaching

49:14 Timeline Mitopure: Powering Your Mitochondria

50:16 Cozy Earth: Better Bedding, Better Sleep

51:04 Responders vs Non-Responders and the IGFBP Biology

55:35 How to Amplify Adaptation From the Same Training Load

56:39 Heat, Post-Exercise Ketones, and Getting the Basics Right

58:14 Sleep Consistency Beats Sleep Duration

01:00:24 The One Weekly Workout for VO2 Max and Brain Health

Thank you to our sponsors

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I’m Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer’s prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics.

My mission is to translate cutting-edge neuroscience into actionable strategies for cognitive longevity, peak performance, and brain disease prevention. If you're committed to optimizing your brain- reducing Alzheimer’s risk - and staying mentally sharp for life, you’re in the right place.

Stay sharp. Stay informed. Join thousands who subscribe to the Neuro Athletics Newsletter → https://bit.ly/3ewI5P0

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisanicola_/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/louisanicola_
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Everyone gets cancer five times a day — your body already knows how to take care of it."

Sam Bertram is the co-founder and CEO of OnePointOne, the vertical-farming company behind the Willo brand. With his brother John (CTO), Sam is building fully automated indoor farms — powered by AutoStore robotics, AI, and precision LED light — that grow nutrient-dense produce in about 15 days, with no soil and no sunlight. But the vision goes far beyond salad: using plants as living factories to manufacture pharmaceutical-grade molecules (like monoclonal antibodies) at a fraction of today's cost, and eventually "closing the loop" on human nutrition — food grown to your own blood work.

*Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+: *
https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/yout...

Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance.

_____

TOPICS DISCUSSED

00:00 – Cold open: bold claims & who is Sam Bertram
00:51 – Why vertical farms collapse (Bowery) & how OnePointOne survived
05:49 – The number that started it all: 1.1 billion malnourished
07:30 – Why micronutrient deficiency is the real killer
08:21 – What OnePointOne actually is: "a box that grows plants"
10:03 – Training plants with light & water to boost nutrients
11:00 – Closing the loop: food matched to your body's data
12:28 – The plan for 1,000 farms & the AutoStore partnership
15:46 – Plant biology 101: growing with no soil, no sun
18:11 – The robots — and why humans are still essential
21:27 – Pesticides, washing produce & disease clusters
23:53 – Beet greens for cancer patients & the Whole Foods deal
24:42 – A 13-person company run on AI
25:15 – The 15-day crop & cracking the cost code
27:11 – Biology vs. software: what really makes it work
28:01 – Humanoid robots, ~5 years away
30:27 – Why raise $80M and not $500M
33:56 – What they do to a plant that nature never would
36:28 – Expanding crops: strawberries, cannabis, mushrooms
38:05 – Growing food & materials in space (Elon, text back)
39:38 – Personalized food grown from your blood test
40:24 – Food as medicine & the truth about Western medicine
41:11 – Sam's mystery illness: 8 years without exercise
44:23 – Plants as medicine — who "fed and dosed" the world?
49:32 – Manufacturing pharmaceutical molecules inside plants
50:18 – Replicating $30–40k drugs cheaply (Rituximab, Lecanemab)
54:21 – Why the Middle East may beat the US, RFK Jr & MAHA
55:11 – Genetics, cancer & the healthy 80–90%
57:35 – Taste: beating junk food at its own game
58:27 – Why good food got so expensive (money printing)
59:14 – A world without hunger — how far away?
1:00:24 – Tasting the farm: microgreens, bok choy, mizuna & kale
_______

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Use code LOUISA for a free full-size mascara with your purchase (and mention The Neuro Experience podcast when they ask where you heard about them)

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Use code NEURO for 20% off (also available on Amazon)
_______

I’m Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer’s prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics.

My mission is to translate cutting-edge neuroscience into actionable strategies for cognitive longevity, peak performance, and brain disease prevention.
If you're committed to optimizing your brain- reducing Alzheimer’s risk - and staying mentally sharp for life, you’re in the right place.

Stay sharp. Stay informed. Join thousands who subscribe to the Neuro Athletics Newsletter → https://bit.ly/3ewI5P0
Instagram: / louisanicola_
Twitter : / louisanicola_
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fifty years ago the U.S. government classified it alongside heroin: no accepted medical use, high potential for abuse, illegal in most of the world. The peer-reviewed data now coming out of Johns Hopkins, Imperial College, and Nature tells a different story, one that has some of the most credentialled neuroscientists alive rethinking how the brain heals. In this episode, Louisa breaks down exactly what psilocybin does to your neurons, why it works where antidepressants stall for decades, and where the research is heading right now.

She walks through the default mode network, the self-referential system that turns rigid and hyperactive in depression, and the 2024 Nature study that described psilocybin's effect on it as "massive" disruption. You'll hear how a single dose drove a measurable jump in dendritic spine density within 24 hours, why psilocin binds the TRKB receptor 300 times more strongly than any conventional antidepressant, and how Robin Carhart-Harris's head-to-head trial against escitalopram produced more than double the remission rate.

Then she turns to addiction, where psilocybin-assisted therapy reached an 80% smoking abstinence rate at six months in the Johns Hopkins pilot, more than double the best medication available today. She covers the risks the drug-war narrative leaves out, the hard contraindications around psychosis and cardiac history, the April 2026 executive order that accelerated federal review, and why the quality of the subjective experience, measured on the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, may matter to the outcome as much as the molecule itself. You'll also hear about the desynchronization event and what fills the space when the network goes offline, BDNF and how it stacks up against high-intensity exercise, the alcohol and opioid data, HPPD, Australia's 2023 reclassification, Oregon and Colorado's state access frameworks, and why set and setting may be active ingredients in how the treatment works.

Fifty years ago the U.S. government classified it alongside heroin: no accepted medical use, high potential for abuse, illegal in most of the world. The peer-reviewed data now coming out of Johns Hopkins, Imperial College, and Nature tells a different story, one that has some of the most credentialled neuroscientists alive rethinking how the brain heals. In this episode, Louisa breaks down exactly what psilocybin does to your neurons, why it works where antidepressants stall for decades, and where the research is heading right now.

She walks through the default mode network, the self-referential system that turns rigid and hyperactive in depression, and the 2024 Nature study that described psilocybin's effect on it as "massive" disruption. You'll hear how a single dose drove a measurable jump in dendritic spine density within 24 hours, why psilocin binds the TRKB receptor 300 times more strongly than any conventional antidepressant, and how Robin Carhart-Harris's head-to-head trial against escitalopram produced more than double the remission rate.

Then she turns to addiction, where psilocybin-assisted therapy reached an 80% smoking abstinence rate at six months in the Johns Hopkins pilot, more than double the best medication available today. She covers the risks the drug-war narrative leaves out, the hard contraindications around psychosis and cardiac history, the April 2026 executive order that accelerated federal review, and why the quality of the subjective experience, measured on the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, may matter to the outcome as much as the molecule itself. You'll also hear about the desynchronization event and what fills the space when the network goes offline, BDNF and how it stacks up against high-intensity exercise, the alcohol and opioid data, HPPD, Australia's 2023 reclassification, Oregon and Colorado's state access frameworks, and why set and setting may be active ingredients in how the treatment works.

*Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+: *
https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page

Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance.

_____

*TOPICS DISCUSSED*
00:00 Intro: A Schedule I Drug That's Making Neuroscientists Rethink the Brain
00:39 The Default Mode Network and Your Sense of Self
02:49 How Depression Locks the Brain Into a Rigid Loop
03:23 Where SSRIs Stop Short of the Problem
04:44 The Brain Imaging Data: "Massive" DMN Disruption and Reorganization
06:58 Confirming It in Drug-Naive Brains
08:04 The Rewiring: How Psilocybin Changes Neural Architecture
08:35 Dendritic Spines and Synaptic Density
09:39 How Chronic Stress Shrinks Your Neural Connections
10:16 One Dose, More Connections in 24 Hours (Neuron 2021)
11:02 BDNF, TRKB, and a Signal 300x Stronger Than Antidepressants
13:21 Psilocybin vs the Gold-Standard SSRI
14:37 Double the Remission Rate: The Numbers That Matter
15:53 Side Effects, Durability, and Treatment-Resistant Depression
16:39 The Addiction Breaker: 80% Smoking Abstinence at Six Months
17:36 Alcohol, Opioids, and the Shared Architecture of Addiction
19:10 The Dark Side: Real Risks and Hard Contraindications
22:35 The Policy Earthquake: Executive Orders and FDA Breakthrough Status
24:37 Why It Actually Works: Set, Setting, and the Mystical Experience
26:57 Bringing It All Together

_______

*Thank you to our sponsors*

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