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Andrew Huberman

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Andrew Huberman
Huberman in 2016
Born
Andrew David Huberman

(1975-09-26) September 26, 1975 (age 48)[1]
Palo Alto, California, U.S.
EducationUniversity of California, Santa Barbara (BA)
University of California, Berkeley (MA)
University of California, Davis (PhD)
Scientific career
FieldsNeuroscience
InstitutionsStanford University
University of California, San Diego
ThesisNeural activity and axon guidance cue regulation of eye-specific retinogeniculate development (2004)
Academic advisorsBen Barres (Stanford)
Barbara Chapman (UCD)
Websitehubermanlab.com

Andrew David Huberman (born September 26, 1975) is an American neuroscientist and podcaster. He is an associate professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Since 2021, he has hosted the popular health and science focused Huberman Lab podcast. The podcast has attracted criticism for promoting poorly supported health claims.[2][3][4][5][6] Huberman has promoted and partnered with health supplement companies.[4]

Early life and education

Huberman was born in 1975 at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California, to his father, an Argentine physicist and Stanford professor, and his mother, a children's book author.[7][8] As a child, he was involved in athletics, including soccer and swimming.[7] He received his early education from Gunn High School.[5]

His parents divorced when he was 12 years old.[7] After his parents' divorce, he disengaged from traditional academics and had an interest in skateboarding. He also briefly considered a firefighting career.[7]

After a break from formal education and a reassessment of his interests influenced by therapy and an interest in biopsychology, Huberman resumed his studies and attended Foothill College.[7]

Huberman received a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1998, and an M.A. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000. While at Berkeley, Huberman originally approached Carla J. Shatz to serve as his doctoral advisor; however, she declined the offer, concerned that he had a limited background in molecular and cellular biology and that she would be moving her lab to Harvard. She encouraged Huberman to transfer to the University of California, Davis, and reach out to Barbara Chapman.[9] Huberman obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UC Davis in 2004.[7][10]

Academic career

Huberman spent five years at Stanford University as a postdoc under Ben Barres between 2006 and 2011.[11][12] From 2006 to 2009, he was a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow.[12] During his postdoctoral work at Stanford, Huberman developed genetic tools to study the visual system and contributed to Thrasher.[7]

From 2011 to 2015, Huberman was an assistant professor of neurobiology and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. In 2016, Huberman took a faculty position at Stanford University.[7]

Huberman does research in his lab known as Huberman Lab, which he established at the University of California, San Diego, focusing on biological sciences.[7] Later, he transferred his lab to Stanford when he joined there in 2016.[7]

The lab gained attention in 2016 for using virtual reality (VR) to stimulate retinal neuron regrowth.[7][13][14] The lab also researched non-pharmacological interventions for anxiety disorders, including VR exposure to controlled stressors and breathing techniques.[7][15]

In 2023, Huberman's lab, with David Spiegel, published a research paper on stress mitigation and carried out research on cortisol.[7][10] The lab also released a study on the regeneration of the visual system, contributing to the understanding of stress management techniques and the potential for visual system recovery.[7]

Huberman has also led work investigating the regeneration of eye tissue in mice, which may have a future application in studying optical nerve regeneration in humans.[16][17]

In 2024, New York Magazine stated that Huberman's lab at Stanford "barely exists", with only a single postdoc working there and the lab having been scaled back significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A spokesperson for Huberman said that the lab was still operational.[5]

Podcasts

Huberman was introduced to Robert Mohr in 2019, a New York-based health and fitness publicist who produced "The Fight with Teddy Atlas," a boxing podcast. As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, Huberman grew dissatisfied with what he viewed as health authorities' narrow focus on the virus without providing guidance for improving public health. Mohr facilitated Huberman's appearances on major podcasts, including those hosted by Joe Rogan and Rich Roll. These appearances helped increase his social media following. By the end of 2020, Huberman had appeared on Lex Fridman's technology podcast. Fridman encouraged him to start his own podcast.[7]

In 2021 Huberman launched the Huberman Lab podcast.[10] In the same year, Huberman and Mohr co-founded Scicomm Media to produce science-related content.[7] As of 2023, the podcast had become the third most popular podcast in the US on Spotify platforms and the most followed show on Apple Podcasts.[18][19] In 2023 GQ magazine called it "one of the most listened to shows in the world."[2] His YouTube channel has 5.5 million subscribers and his Instagram account has 6.4 million.[20][21][22]

According to immunologist, microbiologist, and science communicator Andrea Love, Huberman's podcast content is characteristic of pseudoscience, often presenting health claims as scientific when they are in reality insufficiently backed by scientific evidence, or simply wrong.[3] Jonathan Jarry from the Office for Science and Society has questioned Huberman's promotion of "poorly regulated" dietary supplements. According to Jarry, The Huberman Lab podcast has been sponsored by "companies offering questionable products from the perspective of science-based medicine".[4] Joseph Zundell, a cancer biologist, trusts Huberman's expertise in neuroscience but also criticized him for extrapolating animal research for human use without appropriate scientific justification and straying from his area of expertise.[20] These criticisms were echoed by New York Magazine, which also stated that Huberman often "posits certainty where there is ambiguity".[5] Neuroscientist David Berson, who has known Huberman since his postdoctoral research and has been a guest on his podcast, says that Huberman's research is respected among neuroscientists and described his podcast as "a fabulous service for the world" and a way to "open the doors" to the world of science.[20] However Berson also noted that the research community did not always approve of Huberman's monetization of his podcast through sponsors and partnerships. His promotion of unregulated health supplements has been particularly controversial, as these products often have little scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness.[20]

According to an article in Coda, Huberman has promoted anti-sunscreen views on his podcast, saying he is "as scared of sunscreen as I am of melanoma" and claiming that molecules in some types of sunscreen can be found in neurons 10 years after application without providing any evidence.[6] In a 2023 GQ article, Huberman said that he is not a "sunscreen truther" – a term used to describe anti-sunscreen conspiracy theorists.[23] Huberman has also expressed scepticism towards fluoridation and flu vaccination, despite scientific evidence for their effectiveness.[3]

Awards and recognition

  • Cogan Award for Contributions to Vision Science and Ophthalmology (2017)[24]
  • Pew Biomedical Scholar Award[12]
  • McKnight Neuroscience Scholar Award[25]

For his dissertation, he received the Allan G. Marr Prize for Best Ph.D. Dissertation in 2005.[12]

Selected publications

  • Lim JH, Stafford BK, Nguyen PL, Lien BV, Wang C, Zukor K, He Z, Huberman AD (August 2016). "Neural activity promotes long-distance, target-specific regeneration of adult retinal axons". Nat Neurosci (Research article). 19 (8): 1073–84. doi:10.1038/nn.4340. PMC 5708130. PMID 27399843.
  • Balban MY, Neri E, Kogon MM, Weed L, Nouriani B, Jo B, Holl G, Zeitzer JM, Spiegel D, Huberman AD (January 2023). "Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal". Cell Rep Med (Randomized controlled trial). 4 (1): 100895. doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895. PMC 9873947. PMID 36630953.

References

  1. ^ "@hubermanlab" (Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D.) on Twitter
  2. ^ a b Gayomali C (2023-03-02). "The Real-Life Diet of Andrew Huberman, Who Switches to Red Party Lights After Dark". GQ. Retrieved 2024-03-29.
  3. ^ a b c Love A (27 March 2024). "So, Should You Trust Andrew Huberman?". Slate.
  4. ^ a b c Jarry J (7 April 2023). "Andrew Huberman Has Supplements on the Brain". McGill University Office for Science and Society. Retrieved 2023-06-15.
  5. ^ a b c d Howley K (2024-03-25). "Andrew Huberman's Mechanisms of Control". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2024-03-26.
  6. ^ a b Beres D (October 3, 2023). "The dangerous myths sold by the conspiritualists". Coda.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Béchard DE (July 2023). "The Huberman Effect". Stanford Magazine. Retrieved 2023-07-17.
  8. ^ Lester Black (June 27, 2023). "How a Stanford professor became one of the world's top podcasters". SFgate.com. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
  9. ^ "HawkeTalk: The Power of Focus and Passion with Andrew Huberman". CSQ. October 2021.
  10. ^ a b c Wiseman S (2023). "In conversation with Andrew Huberman". Nature Neuroscience. 26 (8): 1312–1315. doi:10.1038/s41593-023-01395-4. ISSN 1546-1726. PMID 37429915. S2CID 259657196.
  11. ^ Barres B (2018). "Ben A. Barres" (PDF). In Albright T, R Squire L (eds.). The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography. Vol. 10. Society for Neuroscience. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-916110-10-9.
  12. ^ a b c d "Andrew D. Huberman | Stanford Medicine". CAP Profiles (in Samoan). Retrieved 2024-01-10.
  13. ^ Lim JH, Stafford BK, Nguyen PL, Lien BV, Wang C, Zukor K, He Z, Huberman AD (August 12, 2016). "Neural activity promotes long-distance, target-specific regeneration of adult retinal axons". Nature Neuroscience. 19 (8): 1073–1084. doi:10.1038/nn.4340. PMC 5708130. PMID 27399843.
  14. ^ "Dr. Andrew Huberman on Virtual Reality Research". NIH News in Health. June 26, 2019.
  15. ^ Robbins R (July 2, 2018). "A daredevil researcher's latest quest: to restore sight lost to glaucoma using virtual reality". STAT.
  16. ^ Weintraub K (11 July 2016). "Regrown Brain Cells Give Blind Mice a New View". Scientific American.
  17. ^ Barres 2018, p. 45.
  18. ^ Shapiro A (2023-11-29). "Apple and Spotify have revealed their top podcasts of 2023. Here is what they do — and don't — tell us". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  19. ^ "Apple shares the most popular podcasts of 2023". Apple Newsroom. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  20. ^ a b c d Ducharme J (2023-06-28). "How Andrew Huberman Got America to Care About Science". Time. Retrieved 2023-07-11.
  21. ^ Spotify. "Podcast Charts". Podcast Charts. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
  22. ^ "Apple Podcasts : United States of America : All Podcasts Podcast Charts - Top". chartable.com. Retrieved 2022-12-19.
  23. ^ Reiss S (2023). "What's Behind the Rise of the Sunscreen Truther?". GQ. Retrieved 2023-10-06.
  24. ^ "The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology- ARVO Awards Recipients: Chronological". www.arvo.org.
  25. ^ "Awardees".
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