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After serious diagnosis, Adolphs says neuroscience flips how he thinks about death

Huberman Lab · Episode 294 Ralph Adolphs · August 17, 2026
After serious diagnosis, Adolphs says neuroscience flips how he thinks about death
Huberman Lab
Huberman Lab
Episode 294 Ralph Adolphs
"You tend to have this perspective that physics gives us of the way the world works that you know the world is going on and when you die you get plucked out of that and everything else goes on. But from a neuroscience perspective it's kind of the opposite. You get this sense that the whole world is actually a construction of stuff in your brain."
Adolphs, speaking generally about receiving a diagnosis that “reminds you of your mortality”, says the experience pushed him towards acceptance, gratitude and a re-evaluation of time. He adds that neuroscience can invert the common intuition about death: rather than “the world loses you”, he argues the subjective world is a brain construction that the individual ultimately “loses”.
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Huberman Lab
Huberman Lab

Episode 294 Ralph Adolphs

August 23, 2026 · 2h 9m · 3 Egleze moments
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