Rhythms Of The Brain & How Modern Life May Be Disrupting w/ Dr. György Buzsáki & Dr. Robert Melillo

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Welcome back, beautiful New York tri-state area and beyond. You're listening to a moment of Zen right here on 710 WOR, the voice of New York IHeartRadio. I'm your host, Zen Sams.

[00:00:10]Welcome back to the Brain Blueprint series brought to you by the Melillo Centers. Today's conversation feels bigger than neuroscience. It feels societal because for the first time in human history, we're living in an always-on environment filled with nonstop stimulation and fragmented attention and artificial light exposure and disrupted sleep cycles and digital overload and constant dopamine-driven engagement is what it comes down to. And many experts now believe that human brain may be struggling to adapt to the speed of modern life itself. Joining us right now is Dr. György Buzsáki. He's one of the world's leading neuroscientists, author of Rhythms of the Brain and The Brain from Inside Out, and among the most cited neuroscience researchers globally. And of course, joining us, my co-contributor always, is Dr. Robert Melillo, world-renowned neuroscience researcher and creator of the Melillo Method, whose work has helped reshape conversations surrounding neurodevelopment, hemispheric imbalance, and functional brain connectivity. He's also the author of New York Times best-selling book Disconnected Kids.

[00:01:16]Today we're driving the conversation even further and we're going to dive into brain rhythms, movement, timing, consciousness, sleep, development, and whether modern life may be fundamentally dysregulating our nervous system itself.

[00:01:31]Doctors, welcome to the show, superstars.

[00:01:34]>> Great to be.

[00:01:34]>> Thank you.

[00:01:35]>> Thank you.

[00:01:36]>> So, I'm going to start with you, Dr. Buzsáki. I think many people feel cognitively exhausted right now without fully understanding why. I I mean, we're consuming more information than at any other point in human history, yet attention spans appear fragmented. We talk about this a lot on the on the Brain Blueprint series with Dr. Melillo, and anxiety is rising and sleep quality is declining, and people are constantly describing feeling mentally overstimulated.

[00:02:06]And some neuroscientists now argue the brain fundamentally evolved not simply for passive thought, but for movement and timing and prediction and interaction with the physical world. So, Dr. Buzsáki, do you believe modern life is pulling us away from the very conditions the human brain evolved for?

[00:02:27]>> I'm a little bit more optimistic.

[00:02:29]Humans always reinvent themselves, and they adapt to any environment. I think the problem is not so much the information overload, that's somehow we call it. It's mostly the uncertainty and emotional issues.

[00:02:42]Um the brain is very resilient. Our brains haven't changed over the past 100,000 years.

[00:02:49]Um The we we we are the the the big difference between living now and living uh you know, 100,000 years ago, that the knowledge of the individual at the the share of the humankind's knowledge of the individual was much much much larger back then. Today, what I know is ridiculously little compared to humankind's knowledge, and it's increasing every single day.

[00:03:14]And that discrepancy is something that we worry about. Now, the good news is, if you want, you know, is is Yes, there is overload now.

[00:03:22]Everybody's talking about AI. Now, the the truth is that large language models give you a little bit easier access. So, there is a phenomenon of of interesting thing in human, it's called externalization of brain function.

[00:03:38]We make artifacts, we make messages.

[00:03:40]Every single artifact that we make is a message. It can talk to many many many people who see that artifact even after I'm dead. These are the books, these are many many things, including the internet, including AI and all those things. They can help. They are not replacing the brain. They are assisting the brain.

[00:03:59]So, this assistance is very very useful.

[00:04:02]Uh just think about, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, when you wanted to write an article, you have to go to the to the library physically and find the articles and to have access to the literature, to have access to knowledge of others. Today, it's at your fingerprint. Now, with the accelerated speed, we can help we can get help and synthesize enormous amount of knowledge. I don't have to worry about about minuscule mistake that I did worry when I was in high school, like what is the square root of 57?

[00:04:34]You don't think about these things anymore. Now, you said, "Oh, I'd like to have an algorithm written for a scientific experiment." You don't have to worry about it. So, the the brain is loaded with enormous amount of information and it has to learn has to learn how to select.

[00:04:52]Uh the brain is a very good selector.

[00:04:54]Uh what I'd like to add to it is that what we feel overwhelmed is the conscious brain.

[00:04:59]Very large computational aspect of the brain is subconscious.

[00:05:05]And that was goes on all the time and we can talk about sleep and other issues that are related to this. So, what I'm saying is that yes, there is an overload. You have to do everything in your power to reduce the exposure to various things that are passive.

[00:05:24]And we can talk about what is the difference between passive and active.

[00:05:27]>> Yeah, and honestly, what you're saying, it feels alarming right now in one capacity because modern life almost seems designed to disrupt rhythm itself.

[00:05:37]And I know Dr. Melillo, I know so much of your work overlaps with timing and synchronization and nervous system organization. I'd love for you to build on that.

[00:05:46]>> Yeah, so Yuri as I briefly discussed with you, you know, you've had a big influence, your work starting with, you know, like came to you following Dr. Rodolfo Llinás. And I'm sure you're familiar with his book, I of the Vortex.

[00:06:00]And he talks about in that book about motricity. And how the foundation of evolution of the brain and the reason why we develop brains on this planet was because a living thing moved. That living things that don't move don't have brains. Living things that move develop the brain. And that the more complex the movement, the more complex the brain, which obviously humans have the most complex movement in bipedalism. Um my work is taken that and also related to brain development. Meaning that uh brain development is kind of like mini evolution. Um and that movement is also the most important initiator of brain development. So, what are your thoughts on that as far as you agree that movement was the foundation of why we develop brains and evolution of the brains and and uh how that might play a role in brain development.

[00:06:52]>> Absolutely.

[00:06:53]So, the brain is a device that always compares. That's what it does. It always anchors the unknown to the known.

[00:07:01]And without that ability to do that, there is no cognitive function whatsoever. Now, how does it do that? So, you have inputs.

[00:07:09]That inputs are coming through the sensor. Now, this is what you are talking about that is a big big deal today because it's the the information is embodied embodied especially in the visual field, in the auditory field, and so on.

[00:07:21]Now, the neurons in my brain has no idea what's going out there.

[00:07:27]They don't know anything about uh figure, shape, sound, and so on. All they know is that they receive action potential from other neurons. So, they need a second opinion.

[00:07:38]And the only second opinion that is available for the brain is action.

[00:07:42]So, without action that verifies or that generates meaning to those things that come into to mind, so to speak, or to come into the brain, there is nothing.

[00:07:52]So, let's have a a thought experiment.

[00:07:54]The thought experiment is that uh one of you donate your brain before you were born, and we can put it in a dish, and uh keep the brain intact for 40 years.

[00:08:07]In your case, it's 25 years. Um and and then add sensors to it. Add the eye, at the skin, at the the ear, and so on to it, and ask what will this brain do? And the answer, my answer, and I agree, I I think Rodolfo Llinás would agree with this as also, that brain can generate no knowledge. It will be have no consciousness, no ability to perceive, because it has no possibility to act upon. Without action, there is nothing. If you don't move, you don't generate anything.

[00:08:41]>> Yeah, so what you're saying is, I know in your book you go through this and you use a similar analogy, um that literally the prefrontal cortex, where we think, where our a lot of our higher cognitive literally kind of emerges out of the motor cortex for movement. And that we need to move to literally calibrate our brain to the world around us. And we do that where the senses come in, but it's the initiation of movement that really develops, and that's what initiates the development of the brain. And if we don't move, we literally don't develop a brain.

[00:09:15]>> Totally correct.

[00:09:16]>> Yeah, and it what's incredible because most people think about the brain as structurally not not rhythmically, right? So, the idea that timing itself may shape perception and cognition and consciousness is fascinating. And for every action, there's a reaction, and it does really translate back to the brain.

[00:09:33]And I think that that brings us directly into something from the brain inside out that completely stopped me in my tracks kind of thing, right? So, one of the most fascinating concepts in your work, Dr. Buzsáki, is that the idea that the brain may not simply react to the world around us, but actively predicts and constructs perception from within. So, which completely changes how we think about behavior and learning and emotion and even reality itself, right? So, can you explain what you mean when you describe the brain functioning from inside out and why that represents such a major shift in neuroscience?

[00:10:10]>> Well, the fundamental question that we ask as humans is why do we have a mind?

[00:10:16]Initially, it was the question of why do we have a soul?

[00:10:19]And and then and then what do we do with that? Who gave us the soul and what is the purpose of that? Why do we have sensors and so on and so on and so on? And the answer is from this framework is that the agent gave us this ability to look at the and and enjoy the beauty of the world.

[00:10:37]And we have to discover the beauty of the world, make decisions, and act upon. So, this is the sequence that you have to perceive.

[00:10:47]The brain is a passive device that absorbs everything passively and then there's a little man somewhere in the middle and that makes a decision and what happens afterwards is a secondary thing. Now, the reality is that it's not this way and you look at the anatomy, the physiology, it looks like something comes in, there is a decision maker, and then there is an output. Well, it turns out that every single part of the brain that generates an output also sends a return envelope to almost every part what we call sensory and higher associational areas.

[00:11:22]So, the brain always always inform the the brain the rest of the brain that I am the agent of my own actions. It's not the world that is changing, but I know what is the difference between what I do and what is done in the environment to me. And if you don't have to the ability, if the brain doesn't have the ability to compare this in time, this is when the temporal aspects come in and absolutely critical because all this information have to be coordinated in time. And this is where oscillations or brain rhythms come very handy.

[00:11:58]The The beauty of the brain oscillations, that is brain-body oscillation, this is what how we refer to them today, they cover a span from 200 h, which is 5 ms, a very short period of time, to up to 24 hours.

[00:12:13]And it's like the periodic system in chemistry that every little uh bracket has its own oscillation, and that's still not interesting. What is interesting that they form a hierarchy.

[00:12:26]It means that the change of this low oscillation has an impact what happens at the faster and faster and faster.

[00:12:34]Now, why is it interesting? The interesting thing is that the brain is so-called an information processing device.

[00:12:40]Information processing can happen only if you have an agreement between the sender and the receiver.

[00:12:48]It The information has to be broken down into smaller and longer chunks, just like in human language. The reason why you understand me is because I make sound or in little language we have have letters, and they concatenate the letters, it's a longer time scale, and the letters become words, and the words can be concatenated at even longer time scale into sentences. This is exactly what brain rhythms do.

[00:13:11]No, faster rhythms engage very small amount of of brain volume, but they can be concatenated in this neuronal letters, this is how we we call them, into neuronal words, and the neuronal words with the help of a slow oscillation can be uh be concatenated or combined into your own sentences. Now, what speed? At the speed of the muscles.

[00:13:35]There is no need for the brain to be very very fast.

[00:13:39]We cannot act faster than myosin, which is the the protein in the muscles, and every single mammal has the same kind of speed.

[00:13:47]If I had to design the brain today, it would be very different. If I have to design a AI brain for a a a rocket or a supersonic uh airplane, of course the reaction time, the actuators are much faster.

[00:14:02]>> Right.

[00:14:03]>> So, this is this is how the brain is built up through evolution.

[00:14:06]>> Well, it feels definitely um philosophical, but also incredibly relevant to how we understand human behavior and consciousness. And Dr. Melillo, I know this next area is deeply connected to your work surrounding movement and cerebral timing and development organization.

[00:14:22]Um I think this is this is the cross-section.

[00:14:26]>> Right. So, you know, what Yuri's talking about is you know, these brain rhythms like alpha, beta, gamma, delta, these different rhythms that we hear in the brain. And um and that they are an emerging property. They get faster as we develop. As our brain develops, they get faster. But as you were talking about Zen, it's related to movement. Um Rodolfo Llinás and others and I know you've talked about this that there's a rhythm in our body, in our motor system called a 10-Hz rhythm, uh which is a physiological tremor, which forms the foundation of what we call motor binding. Meaning, when we talk about somebody being coordinated or not coordinated, or clumsy or awkward, a lot of it has to do with their timing, which is really a timing mechanism that's sent from the brain to the motor system, and a lot of what evolution has done is taken that and same mechanism where we use that to bind different areas of our brain together.

[00:15:27]Um, and so a lot of the work that Rodolfo would talk about is the 40 hertz rhythm or the gamma rhythm as being, you know, generated by the thalamus or generated by the those thalamocortical as kind of the binding mechanism that helped to link things together in the brain to make up a thought or a memory like the the 10 hertz rhythm does it from the cerebellum for our body. Do you still agree with that or do you feel like that is accurate or that that 40 hertz rhythm kind of gives us the foundation of being to have a perception and these brain rhythms, is there a developmental trajectory? Do they get faster as we mature?

[00:16:09]>> Very well said. So, let's start with the body. At the 10 hertz is refers to the skeletal muscles, but the body has many, many other rhythms. It has a 15 minute minute uh uh with there's a 1 minute fluctuation.

[00:16:21]For example, my stomach movements are moving every 60 seconds or so and they have a really tremendous impact on my brain rhythms including the alpha activity. Uh the my my body rhythms determine how strong my handshake is, for example, or if you're an athlete.

[00:16:39]How would you coordinate the heart, the respiration and other motility systems that you have an absolutely perfect performance when you are high jumper or something like that. Now, these are the drivers as Dr. is spelling spelling it out for the for the brain.

[00:16:55]Now, the thalamocortical system and 40 hertz, I think we moved a little bit forward since Rodolfo's ideas. He thought about the the the thalamocortical system as the sole or perhaps the dominant source of 40 hertz.

[00:17:07]40 hertz is something very simple. It's not 40 hertz, it's anywhere between 30 to 100 hertz. It's called gamma oscillation.

[00:17:14]It's basically a tug-of-war between inhibition and excitation.

[00:17:20]Wherever inhibition and excitation together increases, then you can detect gamma oscillation, slow frequency or or high frequency gamma activity. And this is why it is so rich in in rich in information in in patients which have electrodes under their dura that is correctly contacting directly the brain surface, that if you have enough of these recording electrodes in brain, you can basically read out whether you are Republican or Democrat, whether you like Coke or Pepsi. You can we can have extraordinary information. It's a correlation only what happens in the brain. So, these oscillatory patterns are correlates of some things that happen locally and distributed globally, and that's what could be exploited by neuroscience as well as brain disease.

[00:18:11]>> Yeah.

[00:18:12]That's fascinating because most people associate consciousness with thought, but what you're describing is consciousness potentially emerging from movement and timing and rhythm and coordinated neural communication. I mean, that's really an entirely different concept right there, and it also when you when you're speaking of these concepts, it brings me back to when you meet a soulmate, something happens that you cannot explain, but you know and you react, but you not you cannot put it into context or words. But when you know, you know. The same thing when a gut feeling emerges. I mean, all of this is so fascinating and ties back to your work. I love this conversation. And honestly, that becomes especially important when we start talking about children and development, right? So, I kind of want to lead this back to um to to you, Dr. Buzsáki. So, we are now raising children inside a fully digital environment, constant screen exposure, rapid dopamine stimulation like you said, multitasking. I mean, the reduced physical engagement to Dr. Milolou's point that he's been, you know, waving the red flag for. And then all this leads to major sleep disruption. And many parents genuinely feel like something is changing neurologically in real time. So, from a neuroscience perspective, how important are movement and timing and sensory experience and more importantly sleep and environmental input during that early brain development?

[00:19:41]>> So, reflecting back to the previous question, yes, development is driving all these rhythms. The first rhythm that comes out from the brain in the newborn animal and in a that corresponds to the change between or shift between the second and and third trimester of pregnancy, this is when mothers feel what is called baby kick. Now, the baby kicks are there uh a few times a day because they are big. These are whole body movements. But there are literally hundreds to thousands of tiny movements and the the goal of these movements is to generate a map of the body.

[00:20:22]When you are born, you have no idea whether your body is a snake or bull or something like that. Bull more than that.

[00:20:30]The body grows very very quickly. So, when you touch your nose, 2 days later, it's a different distance.

[00:20:37]You have to calibrate. This is another keyword that we we used in this conversation before. You have to You have to calibrate. Now, all these movements are capable of calibrating timing. So, the other rhythms that come in So, let's say this is a is a a realistic time which is in the hundreds of milliseconds scale, but when it it looks when we are looking at development, the fastest rhythm in a rodent, which is this 200 Hz hippocampal ripple oscillation, that comes only after 3 weeks. That's the last rhythm. As you correctly suggested that there is a developmental series is the slow comes first, it's easier, and then building up the faster oscillations come very late.

[00:21:19]This requires the growth of subcortical neuromodulators such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and so on. And all of these are affected by what the what the person is doing. Now, what happens to all of these things when you disengage from the world? This is when you are asleep, but it's not only sleep. You disengage from the world often time. I can see your eyes now. You sometimes you are your eyes are moving away. This is called idling. You are not in connection with me, but you are in connection with your own thoughts. These idling movements are absolutely necessary because this is the time when you have this hippocampal ripples, and that allows you that information enters into your brain.

[00:22:02]There is no amount of will that allows you to say, "I'd like to understand every every sentence in this conversation." The brain decides, quote unquote, what goes in and what will be registered long-term. Now, the selection happens during this idling moments, but the consolidation of today's knowledge will happen tonight.

[00:22:24]And if I erase these patterns from your brain, there are about two to 4,000 of these ripples every single night in a healthy human.

[00:22:33]If I erase them, you will not remember any part of this conversation. So, what happens here is that the learned information is broken into smaller packages. It's like a song is sliced into very small uh aspect of it or a poem, and then it's mixed in various different ways. And this mixing is decided by what you can call the subconscious brain because that happens during sleep. But, it is done in a way that your entire history is determining what happens. That is, the priorities are given not to the sequential order that happened during the waking time, but what was important for you, as you mentioned your soulmate, or if you mentioned anything that is have higher importance, this gets a higher flag, and it will be repeated more frequently than many other things.

[00:23:28]So, uh indeed, without sleep, first of all, you die.

[00:23:34]Second, if it's is if impaired, then we have problems. Every single psychiatric disease is associated with one or other form of brain rhythm problems, and consequently, sleep problems. Studying sleep for the sake of sleep is interesting, but for studying sleep for the sake of disease is also important, because sleep is honest.

[00:23:56]Sleep tells you how your brain dynamic is.

[00:24:01]When during the conversation, I can pause, I can be distracted, and so but when you are looking at a sleeping brain, that doesn't lie.

[00:24:09]>> Yeah. Ce- cellular repair, mitochondrial repair, inflammation, all of this gets regulated when we sleep, and I think our circadian rhythm is quite often overlooked. But, the old adage of make sure your children are getting enough sleep, you know, they say 12 10 to 12 hours. I think by the time kids reach 10, that drops to seven, and that is neurologically damaging to them. My daughter's 10 and a half, and she still sleeps 12 hours, and she thinks that I'm not cool. But, I but I say to her, this is where the magic happens, and you've got to prioritize sleep. So, I love that you just reinforced it. And I think, to your point, Dr. Buzsáki, one of the biggest fears for parents right now is that we're advancing technologically faster than we fully understand neurologically. I mean, I'm learning as you're speaking right now, and this is going to help me tweak certain parenting aspects that now I know I need to make shifts for, which brings me to Dr. Melillo. Dr. Melillo is so good at really consulting and working with families to really bring out the potential of some of these even non-verbal children. And I know Dr. Melillo clinically you've spent decades exploring developmental timing and hem- hemispheric coordination and functional connectivity, right? So, lead us into this next conversation.

[00:25:22]When you look at conditions like autism, talk to me about uh the tension disregulation there.

[00:25:27]>> Yeah, so like again, Dr. Besaki's work and the way he describes it is brilliant. I've tried to make it practical into what it is mean. So, when we talked about movement is what really initiated brains to begin with and movement is what initiates the development of human brain. And as he talks about this, these early movements in the womb, those movements consolidate into what we call primitive reflexes.

[00:25:51]So, there are these pattern movements that are generated before we're born that help the baby be born. And then they lead to these milestones, especially in the first year.

[00:26:03]And what we've been able to show in our research is that's often disrupted in the womb, where the timing of when these reflexes are coming on is off. And then a child may be born and the first milestone is the rooting and sucking reflex, where 90% of the children that with autism that don't speak, they can't latch on appropriately. And then they don't roll over and then they don't crawl the way they're supposed to and they move in an alternate way, which changes their brain rhythms and timing.

[00:26:33]And also their brains are should be getting faster. And as he said, in the first year or two is when we're really building the foundation of these maps in the brain, especially in the right side of the brain. We're developing a sensory map of our whole body, where it is, so we know how to move it. And the biggest part of that map is the face, the tongue, the lips, and the mouth, and then the hand and the finger for pointing. Then we develop a motor map of how to move that. And that disruption, what we see is that in autism, they have these retained reflexes. Their milestones are almost always thrown off.

[00:27:11]It affects their brain rhythms when we look at it at EEG, and they're slower than they should be. And they're not building these maps in the brain, and that is what actually affects their ability to speak. It's not their left brain language networks, which are actually advanced. So it takes a lot of what, you know, he's talking about and putting into that, and many of these children don't sleep as well. So, you know, it's really fascinating to bring this all together. And then by what The other thing he talked about is the eye movements, and how shifting your eyes Our most recent paper, we're talking about the timing of movement, and when you shift your eyes for gaze is really the foundation of a lot of social development. And that is altered in autism, right? So it all comes together.

[00:28:03]The point being, how do you change it?

[00:28:05]One of the things is by getting rid of these reflexes as early as possible, improving movement, and improving that.

[00:28:12]So, you know, being And I do believe that And I I know if you if you question I would have for you, Yuri, is again, what she was saying is that, you know, I believe that the lack of movement that we're seeing from the use of technology at earlier ages, we know that children are not moving as much as they used to.

[00:28:31]Um and that's more and more and more, and it's related to increased obesity.

[00:28:36]Do you Do you feel like that is also a big problem that if children aren't moving the way they're supposed to, when they're supposed to, the amount that they supposed to, that that's going to ultimately affect the development of these rhythms in their brain and that synchronization.

[00:28:52]>> Well, the naive assumption as you point out is that if you are given a child or an adult a lot of {quote} information by watching movies passively, then it the way the brain will get richer. No. Okay, we we all agree with that. Now, there are many interactive games, so to speak, that say, "Okay, they you have to be interactive and you have to respond and it helps." The problem with many of these are that these games, they could be useful if they are used for for therapy because they engage the cerebellum and motor areas, but not the cognitive sphere. So, and they are not transferable. This is the keyword, not transferable. So, if you if you train a a a subject to decrease this the reaction time for a visual stimulus for the left eye, it doesn't transfer to the right eye. Or even you can just shine light with a with a little laser to the to the upper quadrant of of of my left eye and the lower quadrant will not be trained. So, they this this is this is good. You you can be very very very good. We there are many many examples of of humans who can play with the cubic with the Rubik's Cube and they can solve seemingly extraordinary task.

[00:30:08]And most people most of these people cannot hold a job. You know, that's a very interesting message. Now, about what you you mentioned is that oh, in in autistic children the the rhythms are slow and so on. I think it's not the important is slower faster. The keyword here is whether it's coordinated or not coordinated because delivering things from various aspects of the brain and body, simple example is that you are looking at me while I'm talking and you are you you understand me more when you see me because you read my lips. So, that's a lip reading is very very important. Uh the the the The The timing is very important.

[00:30:47]The trivial example is when you touch your nose with your toe.

[00:30:53]You know, it's a simple experiment everybody can do. And the question is which one you feel earlier?

[00:30:59]The nose or the toe? And the answer is yeah, we feel it simultaneously. It's the same time. Even though everybody knows that the wiring from here to my brain and from the toe to my brain is very very different. Therefore, the information comes much later and the brain has to reconstruct with the help of what what Dr. Melillo just mentioned about calibration, learning, motor actions.

[00:31:21]Or another trivial example, you are driving on the highway and you hit a deer.

[00:31:26]And then you say, "Oh, I've seen this deer and therefore I hit the brakes."

[00:31:30]No, you hit the brake first before you have seen the deer because your brainstem, your subconscious reflexes are already there before what you call seeing happens. So, all of these coordinations have to be in place. If they are not coordinated normally, so to speak, then this is a curse where this autism, where this psychiatric disease.

[00:31:52]They are pretty much the same from this fundamental aspect.

[00:31:56]>> Right. So, you're saying that the foundation of basically all mental health issues really comes down to that.

[00:32:01]That ability to coordinate networks in the brain. And a lot of that starts developmentally in the way these things are able to coordinate together. And if there's any alteration of that, it can manifest as a whole range of different neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions.

[00:32:19]>> Yeah. I want to end on something that modern society may be neglecting more than almost anything else, which is sleep. You both touched on it earlier.

[00:32:28]Uh Dr. Melillo, you mentioned that you see sleep disruption in a lot of children with these neurological developmental delays including autism.

[00:32:35]Dr. Buzsaki, you you said that sleep is critical because that's where our cellular repair happens and really it's optimal. So, sleep has almost become optional in modern culture. People people wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. But, to your point, both of your points, neuroscience continues showing us that sleep is deeply connected to that memory consolidation, right? I'm going to go sleep tonight and to Dr. Buzsaki's point, I'm going to download everything I learned at that cellular level and I'm sleeping. And even my emotional reg- regulation, I believe even my detoxification pathways open up at night. Not believe, I know for a fact.

[00:33:13]And overall brain performance. So, why is sleep I want parents to really understand this cuz both you and Dr. Milillo both feel strong about this. And you could go first, Dr. Buzsaki. But, from your perspective right now, right here, your message to parents, those children plugged in who are not getting enough sleep, why is sleep so neurologically essential? And I'm going to flip the question. What actually happens to the brain when healthy rhythms and sleep cycles become chronically disrupted?

[00:33:43]>> Um you are a good mother.

[00:33:45]You said that you make sure that your your child sleeps enough. That's not enough. Because it's not the duration of sleep that is important.

[00:33:54]Only. Sleep is a symphony.

[00:33:57]Sleep comes in various patterns. It starts with uh shallow and it gets deeper and it goes from non-REM to REM and then this changing and alternating in various patterns every day.

[00:34:10]Well, every night. So, you mentioned about various things such as our hormonal system, such as our immune system. They are slower and they are happening at the at the end of one sequence, but not at the other sequence.

[00:34:22]So, if you mix up sleep and let's say you have a very early onset of REM sleep, normally it happens around 2:00 in the morning.

[00:34:33]But, if it comes at the, you know, 11:00, 12:00, 12:00, that's already very bad. That that's actually diagnostic for depression.

[00:34:41]Um um most people have have tons of REM sleep. Depressed people have a lot of of REM sleep issues. And SSRIs kill REM sleep. There are 7 million people in the United States who don't have REM sleep because they are on on uh on SSRIs.

[00:34:59]So, it it it shows that indeed just looking at a small aspect of sleep, it can do somewhat miracles. Now, uh another fact that is interesting that you have to fall asleep, and then you go to the deeper sleep. It's called slow-wave sleep. This is when these hippocampal sharp wave ripples happen.

[00:35:16]And these are very synchronous patterns. These are the most powerful patterns that do a lot of of service for memory, but they also do a lot of service for the body because they go through the hypothalamus, and they regulate your blood glucose levels.

[00:35:31]Decrease the blood glucose levels. Third of all, they are responsible for releasing growth hormones.

[00:35:37]Growth hormones are the ones that are responsible for growing the body, but also responsible for making neural connections. This is called plasticity.

[00:35:47]Now, the bad news is I don't have any left of that the slow-wave sleep because after age 40, it starts to drop drop out, and after 70 years of age, there is almost nothing. So, the my growth hormones are at a minimum level. My protein synthesis, my regenerative abilities, and so on and so on are changing. But, that happens also in the in the in the teenager brain. So, if you if you are deprived from sleep, you have a rebound effect. But, during sleep deprivation, your reaction time, everything changes.

[00:36:23]4 to 5 hours of sleep deprivation is equal to about one glass of wine.

[00:36:30]>> Oh, Jesus.

[00:36:31]>> So, when your teenagers are driving home, they are not supposed to drink, but nobody cares whether they are sleep deprived 4 or 5 6 hours, and the combination, of course, is is a is a is a terrible thing. So, now, what we have to do, of course, that that's the difficult part, is that how you restore the the symphony of sleep, or, which is perhaps a little bit easier, how to preserve the healthy symphony.

[00:36:57]And if you allow your children to watch TV or leave the cell phone on, and and they are listening to the to some conversation during the night, or there are many other disruptions that happen during the night, that's bad bad bad.

[00:37:13]Then, the every single minute, there is a pattern called micro arousal.

[00:37:18]Now, there are uh the number of micro arousals that happen in a in the healthy person is is a ideal number.

[00:37:28]But, if it's very few, or if it is very very prominent, and the interruption of this uh this this evolution of activity happens at the wrong time, such as when you have uh uh snoring problem. So, when you have anything that interferes with your sleep. So, you wake up after 10 hours of of sleep, and uh your caretaker, your mother, or your your partner said, "Oh, you slept 10 hours." But, you still feel that you are sleep deprived, because the subjective feeling of sleep depends on these micro arousals and their distribution, their proper distribution throughout the night. So, sleep is a is a uh a a uncharted territory. It has to be explored for the benefit of many psychiatric diseases.

[00:38:15]>> Wow. I mean, it all really ties together, and between sleep and rhythm and all the all the synchronicities here that we're seeing for this to really go our way. Uh there's a there's a lot that I've learned. Dr. Melillo, you are amazing at explaining everything and breaking it down. That's is why our millennial mom uh loves you. And Dr. Buzsáki, I mean, this conversation was absolutely extraordinary. Your work continues challenging the way we understand memory and movement and timing and more importantly, synchronization and consciousness and and the brain itself. I thank you so much for coming on. Today's discussion made something very clear to me. It's the the future of human health really depends on understanding not just what the brain is, but how it functions in rhythm with the world around it. So, thank you so much for showing that today.

[00:39:05]>> Thank you so much.

[00:39:06]>> All right. To learn more about Dr. György Buzsáki, you can visit buzsakilab.com.

[00:39:11]You can also explore his groundbreaking books Rhythms of the Brain and The Brain from Inside Out. And of course, thank you always to our Dr. Robert Melillo for continuing to help bridge complex neuroscience into real-world understanding for families everywhere.

[00:39:26]This was the Brain Blueprint series brought to you by the Melillo Centers.

[00:39:29]You're listening to A Moment of Zen right here on 710 WOR, the Voice of New York, iHeartRadio. We'll be right back after this.

[00:39:35]>> A Moment of Zen is brought to you by the Melillo Method Centers, where hope [music] truly lives, specializing in ADHD, dyslexia, autism, and other neurological challenges. Dr. Robert Melillo and his team create personalized treatment plans to go beyond symptom management. Using advanced neuroscience, they help children and adults reach their fullest potential. Families worldwide choose the Melillo Method for answers [music] and results. Begin your journey to better brain health at drrobertmelillo.com.