Stanford Radio

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman Andrew Huberman: How stress affects the mind — and how to relieve it The year has unleashed stresses few would have imagined just months ago, but the science of stress — and of stress relief — is keeping pace. A Stanford neurobiologist explains. Andrew Huberman is a Stanford neurobiologist and ophthalmologist keenly interested in the biology of stress and ways to manage stress. He’s developed and tested a number of stress-relieving techniques — from specific patterns of breathing to visual tools — and uses virtual reality to help humans control their stress in adaptive ways. He is also testing how people can access better sleep using stress-relief tools. Much of this work is done in collaboration with David Spiegel, MD, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine. Huberman studies how the nervous system takes in and processes information and uses it to drive reflexive and deliberate behavior. In that regard, humans are largely visual