Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Ep5: Dr. Stephen Peters, Psy.D., ABN, Equine Neuroscientist - CO, USA

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Ep5: Dr. Stephen Peters, Psy.D., ABN, Equine Neuroscientist - CO, USA · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

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  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
• 0:11
  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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  Here on Equine Assisted World.
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  We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
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  established in the equine assisted field.
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  This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
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  physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
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  These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
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  Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
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  Welcome back to equine assisted world where we talk to people at the cutting
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  edge of this Can't really even call it an industry this Practice the service
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  this way of looking at the world of how horses interact with humans And
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  make them feel better basically We look at it from the horse angle, we look
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  at it from the human angle, we look at it from the body angle, we look at
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  it from the nervous system angle, and we look at it from the brain angle.
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  And for those of you who know, a little bit about the approach, with
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  our own methods, , horseboy method, movement method, and so on, , you'll
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  No, it's very, , neuroscience based.
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  It's very brain based, but we're not neuroscientists.
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  We just stumbled into something that, we had explained to us why
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  it was working by neuroscientists.
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  It's relatively rare that we get an actual neuroscientist, , here, , in front of us.
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  they tend to sit in, special neuroscientist kennels in universities
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  and you don't really get access to them.
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  You have to go through.
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  all sorts of, wire and, , locked gates and things like that.
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  But we managed to break one out of, of the, , Of the ivory tower
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  and bring it to you guys to listen.
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  So we're very, very lucky.
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  We've got Dr.
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  Steven Peters here, who's a unique individual in many, many ways, because
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  not only, , is he a brain scientist and a doctor, , and, but he also is, has autism.
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  , and he's also a very accomplished horseman.
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  And has been working in the field of equine assisted stuff in
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  general, as well as horsemanship in general for many, many years.
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  And so he's in a unique position to really, , enlighten us on a lot of
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  things that a lot of us wonder about.
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  Because let's face it, when you're working with a human or whether
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  you're working with a horse.
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  If you're working with any sentient being, pretty much, you're working with the
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  brain, that's what you're working with.
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  You might want your horse to do a half pass, but first
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  you've got to access the brain.
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  You might want, , this, A client or service user that you're working
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  with to, do to participate in a, in a, in an activity that is
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  going to have a beneficial effect.
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  Well, that's only going to happen if you can reach the brain.
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  Yet the brain is the thing that we are taught the least about, in most of our,
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  training, whether we are teachers, whether we're therapists, whether we're, even,
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  you know, people in the medical field, they don't get an awful lot of brain
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  science unless they go looking for it.
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  So we went looking for it.
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  And here we have Dr.
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  Steven Peter.
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  So Dr.
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  Peter, Dr.
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  Steve, thanks so much for coming on.
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  Who are you?
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  Tell us who you are.
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  Dr. Steven Peters: Well, Rupert, I'm glad to be a part of your.
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  Your program here.
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  I am a neuroscientist, and I'm glad you brought that whole idea
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  up about neuroscientists coming out of the, their ivory tower.
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  In fact, that sort of drove me in my, in my horse work.
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  I was a human neuroscientist and I assessed brain functioning and ran memory
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  clinics and, in a clinic for brain health, big hospital based clinics.
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  But I always had horses.
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  And so I always looked at them from that neurological vantage point.
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  You know, every mammal has a, a nervous system and that's
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  what we communicate with.
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  I guess a big frustration.
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  was talking to people in the horse world who assumed that horses
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  perceive the world as we do.
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  And if you just stop for a second and think, You know, the, the shape of
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  their pupil, the sounds that they bring in, the mechanoreceptors in their skin,
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  they can't perceive a world that we perceive, but we use the human brain as
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  a, as a standard to compare the horse to.
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  So people would say crazy things like that horses.
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  stubborn.
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  It knows better.
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  It's disrespectful.
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  You know, when a horse was simply being a horse and the person lacked
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  the communication skills to connect with the horse and understand
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  that language, with the horse.
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  So I I wanted to find somebody who saw horses enough horses,
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  it would give me some good data.
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  You can't do anything in science with small numbers.
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  So I'd look through the peer reviewed literature and I'd see Maybe six
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  horses and they were all Pasafinos and they were all in a stable
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  and they were all receiving the same food, you know, grain, etc.
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  And, and you can't generalize from that sample out into the world of, of horses,
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  but you'd see research that would, would seem to indicate that that was the case.
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  So I got frustrated even with the science side of things.
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  So Martin Black, for those who don't know, is a fifth generation cowboy
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  and has spent his lifetime working with horses, as has his family.
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  In fact, Martin's family has supplied horses for almost every
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  war that the United States has fought right up to World War Two.
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  So, Martin, when he was a teenager, wanted to earn extra money.
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  So he developed a contract colt starting business and
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  was starting 500 colts a year.
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  As a teenager.
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  So Martin has seen his empirical data is what he's observed again and
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  again was invaluable huge numbers.
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  So he and I got together.
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  I provided the science I would say things like do horses.
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  You ever see horses do this in this situation?
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  And he said, yeah, it took me about a thousand horses before I saw that.
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  How the hell do you know that?
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  I said, I only know that because I understand how the brain works.
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  And so it was both of us putting the puzzle pieces together, his empirical
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  data, my scientific data, and we wrote a book, Evidence Based Horsemanship.
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  And then that sent me off.
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  I had no idea that this would catch on.
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  I, I was planning on, on a retirement with my dogs and my horses and, , a quiet,
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  contemplative, artistic life, painting and drawing and doing those things.
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  And that has not been the case.
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  you know, I've been asked, first off, By scientific groups, but then the lay
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  public and I found that people want to connect and understand their horses
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  and understand the reactions that they get with their horses and understand
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  how it's two nervous systems coming together, the human and the horse
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  that the interaction is so important.
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  So these programs follow steps ABC and D are just so rigid and sometimes crazy.
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  You know, I'd ask people, why does your horse do that well.
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  There are right brain introverted Sagittarius.
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  I have all these charts and graphs that I spent money for to show me this.
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  so for me, it just seems so far out there and, and so confusing.
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  To the public and if it's confusing to the public, whatever they present
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  is going to be confusing to the horse.
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  And, you know, I really felt the horse was getting a disservice.
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  So I've sort of been on this mission of providing information about the horse's
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  nervous system and What we do, we do brain dissections and I show people all
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  the connections, with a horse, which can be quite profound for somebody to
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  hold an organ that it controls, like, like you said, Rupert, everything that
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  that horse perceives and does and learns, you know, if it kicks it bucks, it
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  bolts, it grazes, has to be processed through the brain and the nervous system.
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  So understanding what's under the hood.
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  It is a really a, key step in understanding the horse as a,
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  as a whole in a different level, a whole different level than
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  just making the horse do things.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Here's the question.
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  I want to ask you a bunch of things from this.
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  But something that comes up, immediately is, I think it is true to say that you
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  can generalize some aspects of horse training, otherwise people would not ever
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  have been able to train horses, including Martin Black, would not have been able to
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  start all these colts, nor his family, you know, for the army, et cetera.
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  However, I think, yes, it's certainly true that even if we get horses
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  to do things, we misunderstand.
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  their motives, their reactions, their, it's hard for us to, to
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  judge their well being outside of their physical well being.
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  the first question that arises is if it's so flawed traditionally how we've been
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  approaching horses and horse training.
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  Just gonna play devil's advocate for a moment.
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  Why is it so effective?
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  Because we've done, we've, we've done amazing things with horses
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  over the centuries, without a doubt.
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  what's the what's the disconnect?
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  What's what's wrong?
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  Dr. Steven Peters: Let me ask you.
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  Do you really think we've been that effective?
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  It's a good question.
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  Here would be my argument is that, you know, horses are, are, you can
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  make them do things and you can turn them into robotic animals actually,
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  and lose that, that connection.
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  So you don't have a communication.
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  For example, if you're starting a colt, and, and this is what
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  Martin and I have come upon.
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  If you're starting a colt.
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  You can be really clear in your communication if they're in the right
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  mental framework in order to understand what you're asking, or you can force them
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  where they're sympathetically aroused.
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  to go through emotion.
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  but what you're leaving your horse with, like a human to learn, we all need safety.
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  We have to feel safe.
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  We have to have a motivation to learn.
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  So we have to have a way to tap into dopamine.
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  and we have to have attention.
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  Oftentimes when you're getting out of after your horse or trying to discipline
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  them, you lose their attention.
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  They check out.
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  on you, or if you have their attention, they're not feeling safe if you're
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  forcing them to do something.
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  So you end up with neuronal bits and fragments that the horse has to try to
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  struggle to put together because they're not in the right neurochemical state.
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  In other words, it's, it's a, it's a noise to signal ratio problem.
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  If you've got lots of noise in their nervous system, then they've
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  got a hunt for that signal.
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  And they may or may not find it.
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  And then you have, if you have to punish them in order to make them
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  search even harder, yes, you can make them learn to do something, but.
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  They may be just reacting out of fear and that may be rote memorization that
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  they, they come to from constant drilling.
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  And if you looked at the brain that was constantly drilled, you'd find these
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  rigid, rigid neuronal connections, because brains are live wire, as
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  they're based on our experience.
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  After you and I have this talk, if we've stimulated each other's brains, there
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  will be different connections in our neural network, and we will actually
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  be different people than we were tomorrow than we are today based on.
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  So in other words, if, if we can find that optimum neurochemical mix
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  where the horse feels safe, where the signal, no matter how subtle.
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  Is understood because we've reduced the noise and the noise being excess pressure
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  and the horse can find where that pressure is and have an internal locus of control.
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  They can find their way out the other side so they're under pressure.
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  We take the pressure away, they recognize that, and then they learn
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  that they can get there on their own, that if feeling stressed.
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  they can find that safe zone, then horses become like what Martin
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  calls special forces horses, those horses can sort things out and and
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  have a brain full of dendrites.
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  You take the horse out of the arena.
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  Brain of horse.
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  Never.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Go ahead.
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  Brain full.
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  You said they have a brain special forces horses with a brain full of dander rights.
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  Did you say den dendrites.
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  Dendrite.
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  What are dendrites?
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  Tell us, tell us what dendrites are.
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  Dendrites
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  Dr. Steven Peters: are little branches off of, axons that, that branch out.
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  They arbor out Arborization.
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  And so like tree can have many, like a tree, many, many branches.
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  If we do rote memorization, rote training, drilling, we have a
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  horse that's never left the arena.
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  You'll have a lot of dendrites.
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  Well, you won't have many dendrites actually.
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  They'll be pruned back and you'll have very rigid neuronal connections.
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  If you then take that horse out for a trail ride, they may come completely
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  apart because they haven't built up enough options and but a horse that's
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  been allowed to explore a horse that's been understood and feel safe.
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  You know, it takes very, it takes a lot to get those horses feeling threatened,
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  because they can find a way out.
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  They can resort to other behaviors.
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  And those horses get us out of trouble.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, sometimes when we're too dumb to know we've got ourself
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  in trouble, the horse can do that because it's got all these branches
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  in their, in their brain connections.
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  So I would argue with you that have we really been effective?
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  No,
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  Rupert Isaacson: it's, it's well, in certain, in certain, well, you,
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  you're giving me it's interesting pause for thought because I think in
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  some, in some areas, yes, we have.
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  And it's a question then of.
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  This thing about dendrites, for example, that allows a layman like
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  me to identify why it might have worked so well in this area or
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  this discipline or this environment and not so well in this other one.
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  So I'm absolutely with you on this.
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  So, for example, I grew up very much with fox hunting and
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  fox hunting in the UK, is.
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  You rely on your horse 100% because the fences are can be ridiculously
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  big that it's not a competition.
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  They're not it's not nothing is prepared.
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  it goes on all day and you trust your horse's judgment completely
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  to get you out of trouble.
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  You might end up.
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  Crossing the freeway and then swimming a river and then da da da.
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  It's very like going to war on a horse in, in, in, in a funny way.
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  And if the horse isn't into it and doesn't dig it, there's, there's
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  just no way you're gonna get killed.
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  and but the, the way in which those horses were produced by those old
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  school horsemen that I grew and women that I grew up around was all about
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  helping the horse to find its way.
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  and there was, there, there was very naturalistic.
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  aspect to it in that it was all done socially.
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  You always did it with mental horses as the horse was coming up until
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  the point that the horse sort of graduated and became this meta horse.
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  And then later I trained with, a lot with, bullfighting mounted
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  bullfighting, people down in Portugal who, whether or not one
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  agrees that bullfighting is sort of a completely by the, by the horsemanship.
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  I don't bullfight.
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  I'm just interested in the horsemanship.
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  The horsemanship is, is bananas because the horse has to go in there
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  and make all the decisions, basically.
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  going like, yeah, absolutely.
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  Let's go.
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  and if there's a moment of, I don't really think so, or, I'm
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  scared or, I just don't want to, you're dead in two seconds because
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  that bull is very intelligent.
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  He knows how to get you up against the boards and skewer you.
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  And I noticed with those horses that they were joyful and humorous and
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  full of character and full of life, even though they were effective, they
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  were non robotic dressage horses.
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  And then I took a lot of that training over to what we do with horse boy,
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  bits of the Fox hunting training and bits of that bullfighting training.
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  And what I noticed was that you, you, your horse's brain seemed
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  to change in front of you.
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  They seem to go from, because we'd often get donation horses, which had
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  come out of all sorts of backgrounds who'd arrived going, what's going on.
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  And.
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  they would become within some months of this training where they're crossing
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  the center line of their body a lot.
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  But it's, it's also, a lot of outdoor time, a lot of social time,
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  a lot of all these other things.
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  And you end up with these horses that absolutely look after you
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  and show up as a professional.
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  this dendrite thing is very interesting to me because is it, this is the
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  question now, is it that in certain effective areas of horsemanship
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  where we, we as a culture have.
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  achieved great things with horses.
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  Is it because we've done it in those environments where the horse's
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  brain can, develop in that way?
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  unhindered.
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  and is it not working in those other environments?
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  Because we're blocking that and getting in the way of that.
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  And is that something that horsemen need to know?
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  Dr. Steven Peters: I believe they do need to know that.
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  In fact, it's not the discipline per se.
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  And you're right, we have been effective in many ways.
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  But look at the common threads there.
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  Those horses that you described had to solve problems on their own, right?
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  So they were given an internal locus of control versus being forced to do things.
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  They became problem solvers, which indeed started, grew a whole forest of dendrites,
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  Rupert Isaacson: right?
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  Yeah, you can't force the bullring and you can't force a horse
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  over a big blackthorn hedge.
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  It just, you just can't.
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  They're just not going to do it.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  They didn't check
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  Dr. Steven Peters: out because they, they had an internal sense of safety too.
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  So something happened in, in their training that allowed them to, because
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  horses are constantly asking, am I safe?
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  Am I safe?
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  Am I safe?
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  If we can answer that question, then, then we can draw off their
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  curiosity because you can't be curious if you're being threatened.
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  So once they become curious and can get that dopamine hit.
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  You know, then they seek it out.
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  They become super learners.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, that's exactly that.
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  That's what I found is that the horses and it doesn't seem to matter
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  what background they come out of, you know, we get horses that are all
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  messed up in all kinds of ways because generally, you know, donation horses
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  are given to you for a reason, right?
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  And we find that with this approach.
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  Their personalities emerge and they become these meta horses relatively quickly.
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  I'd say within about 18 months or so.
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  but dendrites, this is phenomenal.
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  This is very interesting.
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  So basically what you're.
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  For my little brain to understand this, is it that I'm therefore, I'm perhaps
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  receiving a horse whose, dendrites have been snipped and clipped and pruned, and
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  it's a bit like a forest of a plantation of, planted conifers, and then those
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  trees are allowed to find their way within the brain, and then suddenly you have an
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  ecosystem with all sorts of other little species in there, and da da da, which is
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  now an actual forest and what it needed was to be allowed to find its ecosystem.
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  I love this.
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  I love this analogy that you have of You called it arborization.
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  Was that
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  Dr. Steven Peters: was it?
• 20:41
  Arborization.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
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  So tree ization.
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  Arbor tree, right?
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  Like
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  Dr. Steven Peters: an arbor, like branching off because these
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  dendrites will branch off and then rub against other branches.
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  So then now you have a neural network that is really wide.
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  And this should be really empowering to horse owners because You
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  actually are responsible for the creation of dendrites or the pruning
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  back of dendrites of your horse.
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  So in the right environment, those old dude ranch horses, they, they got mixed
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  messages, never felt safe, had no way to escape external locus of control.
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  Their mouths pull down at the same time.
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  They're getting spurred.
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  They check out.
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  and they become robotic.
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  And if you were to take those brains and look at them under a microscope,
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  you'd find just very sparse dendrites.
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  They don't know how to solve a problem, you know, and, and
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  actually their nervous systems have, for the most part, shut down.
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  If you take those horses and You can reach a point where you're not going to
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  get that good a return, you get an older horse that's constantly been traumatized,
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  you know, you, you're still helping them.
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  But, you know, if you can set up an environment where
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  you answer those questions.
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  Yes, you're safe.
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  Yes, you can explore.
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  Yes, you can problem solve, set it up for your horse to solve the problem.
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  You can cross the screen.
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  By allowing your horse to put its head down so it has binocular vision, so
• 22:13
  it splashes in the pond a little bit.
• 22:18
  So that, it, it heads up to that pond and then finally puts its feet
• 22:22
  in and crosses and you can come back and do it again and again.
• 22:26
  Or you could take that horse, get them to the edge of the stream.
• 22:30
  When they balk, you spur them and they jump across like a frog.
• 22:34
  That's not a water crossing.
• 22:36
  And you could say in both instances, that's a water crossing, but I guarantee
• 22:41
  you what happens in the horse's brain is much different than the horse.
• 22:44
  That's been allowed to solve that problem.
• 22:46
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 22:47
  So, you know, I think a lot of, a lot of, you know, good horsemen, women have
• 22:54
  known that yes, if you let's, let's, let's take the, water crossing analogy
• 22:59
  from, that yes, if you allow the horse to do it in his time, if you perhaps
• 23:03
  bring in a mentor horse, if you do all the things that set the horse up for
• 23:07
  success, partly because it's just safer for you, and more efficient, and then
• 23:12
  that horse goes into that trailer, goes, Through that stream, does that new
• 23:18
  behavior, let's say, and then finds it.
• 23:20
  It's a what's I think that that we know that there's a lot of, good horsemen and
• 23:26
  women who would do that sort of thing.
• 23:28
  Someone instinctively because of their empathetic natures, but it's
• 23:31
  very, very useful for them to know why it works because this is always the
• 23:36
  thing when when horseman is talking to horseman or therapist to therapist.
• 23:40
  And they want to say, well, I'm, I'm advocating here for
• 23:43
  a more empathetic approach.
• 23:45
  And someone just says, Oh, you're just a soft hearted hippie.
• 23:47
  If you can say, well, actually, no, I just spoke to Dr.
• 23:51
  Steve and Dr.
• 23:52
  Steve told me about this thing called dendrites and not dandruff, but dendrites.
• 23:57
  And, and, these dendrites, are important because if, if the horse hasn't
• 24:02
  got them or doesn't have enough of them, they can't make the decisions that will
• 24:07
  you out of trouble, let alone them.
• 24:09
  And these dendrites.
• 24:11
  have to arborize and come into contact with other dendrites and rub against
• 24:15
  each other and stimulate each other and create a problem solving ecosystem.
• 24:20
  But it comes down to that's something you can explain to people and they can get.
• 24:24
  that's
• 24:24
  Dr. Steven Peters: fascinating.
• 24:26
  You're exactly right.
• 24:27
  And that there are a number of very fine horsemen.
• 24:30
  I don't, didn't mean to just go back and just denigrate things
• 24:33
  that had happened in the past.
• 24:35
  And that this is an enlightened.
• 24:37
  You know, , because there, there are wonderful horsemen and women
• 24:43
  that understand the how they understand how to get this to happen.
• 24:48
  They just don't have the why.
• 24:51
  Absolutely.
• 24:52
  And if they have the why, then they can fine tune the how.
• 24:56
  Absolutely.
• 24:57
  And
• 24:57
  Rupert Isaacson: optimize it and replicate it and show other people how to do it.
• 25:02
  okay.
• 25:02
  So what I want to do here is I want to dial back a moment.
• 25:04
  tell us.
• 25:06
  what is the main difference?
• 25:09
  What are the main differences between the horse brain and the human brain?
• 25:14
  And what are the key ones that we need to know?
• 25:16
  Those of us that are working with horses.
• 25:20
  Horses
• 25:21
  Dr. Steven Peters: do not have an area of the brain and what we call
• 25:24
  prefrontal cortex that, that allows them to have abstract thought.
• 25:32
  So as far as we know, they're not planning out into the future.
• 25:36
  There aren't horses that say, Wow, I'm going to put aside this, this
• 25:40
  flake of hay until Tuesday and come back and eat it when I'm hungrier.
• 25:44
  Right?
• 25:44
  So they're not forming these contingency plans that we know of.
• 25:50
  but if they don't have abstract thought, what gets us in trouble is we do.
• 25:56
  So let me give you an example.
• 25:58
  It's just rampant in the horse world that people say that
• 26:02
  horse needs to be respectful.
• 26:04
  They're disrespectful.
• 26:06
  Well, that's an abstract concept.
• 26:08
  You know, the horse does not say, well, I'm going to put one over on my owner
• 26:13
  and then go back to the pasture and have a big laugh with all the other horses
• 26:17
  and what I've been able to all the trouble I've been able to cause here.
• 26:21
  What actually happens is the horse is more a motor sensory creature.
• 26:26
  And so if they're stepping into our space, It's because we're doing something
• 26:31
  to inadvertently allow them to do that.
• 26:34
  or we've actually trained them to do that without knowing it, but they're
• 26:38
  just simply being a horse and basing things on the signals that we're giving.
• 26:45
  And the reason that I'm so, hung up on this idea of respect and disrespect
• 26:51
  is then it gives the human permission to punish the horse and discipline the
• 26:55
  horse where I don't really know that that plays a big role in, in, In learning.
• 27:01
  certainly that takes away the safety, et cetera.
• 27:04
  So I think in trying to understand that the horse is a motor sensory
• 27:09
  creature and stop putting using our big frontal lobe to put all this
• 27:16
  abstract thought in their mind.
• 27:19
  It clouds, our, our thinking.
• 27:22
  So the big difference is that frontal lobe.
• 27:25
  Otherwise, we're pretty similar.
• 27:27
  We each have six cortical layers in our, in our brains of cells, you know,
• 27:33
  we have a, well, actually I take that back in the horse brain, there's some,
• 27:39
  in some areas they far exceed us.
• 27:43
  You know, their cerebellum, the structure that hangs to the back of the
• 27:47
  brain, is responsible for fine motor movement, timing, balance, sequencing.
• 27:54
  You know, they have these huge limbs, and you know, they're
• 27:58
  in a trot, just in a diagonal.
• 28:00
  If you understood what had to happen in the brain for that to occur,
• 28:04
  it is pretty fascinating stuff.
• 28:07
  So, and there are olfactory bulbs for smell, which is a primitive sense.
• 28:14
  are enormous.
• 28:15
  If you, if you dissect out the brain, you'll find that they're
• 28:18
  enormous and ours are like thin little shoestrings in comparison.
• 28:24
  So, there are so many differences in the way they perceive the world.
• 28:31
  but the main difference is that we have more white matter and more
• 28:37
  bulk in our frontal lobes that allow us to think more abstractly.
• 28:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Let me ask you a question on this then because I think
• 28:44
  anyone who lives with horses, you know, there's a difference, I think,
• 28:48
  between People who do horse horses as a hobby or a sport and people
• 28:54
  who really, really live with horses.
• 28:55
  not everyone who really, really lives with horses is nice to their horses,
• 28:59
  but let's assume that many of them are.
• 29:02
  I think that for, for a lot of us who live with our horses, we do observe behaviors
• 29:09
  though that look rather prefrontal cortex like, for example, the sense of humor.
• 29:16
  and you say the horse doesn't plan to put one over on you.
• 29:18
  except when he seems to and seems to enjoy the process and
• 29:23
  have a bit of a laugh about it.
• 29:24
  And when he seems to do it, it to his or her herd mates as well.
• 29:29
  if humor, for example, is perspective taking that in order to do something
• 29:35
  because it's entertaining or funny, requires one to sort of see the
• 29:39
  situation from the outside, what, human psychologists will call theory of mind.
• 29:45
  I'm not going to anthropomorphize that onto the horse, but nonetheless,
• 29:49
  definitely humor definitely sometimes now, Oh, I can, I can, I can
• 29:53
  mess with you a little bit here.
• 29:55
  And I have a, I have, for example, a carte blanche with my horses about messing with
• 29:58
  me because, my horses have to be so good.
• 30:02
  When I'm working with the clients that I have, like they've got to
• 30:04
  be so good that I give them what I, a lot of what I call crazy time.
• 30:08
  where they can just go really nuts on sort of playgrounds that I build for them where
• 30:12
  they go running around socially together.
• 30:16
  Also, they can mess with me when I'm riding them.
• 30:20
  I have a sort of amnesty thing on them, which is if you want to kind
• 30:24
  of run away with me a little bit, if you want to kind of throw a buck,
• 30:26
  if you want to express yourself in a way that is humorous, have at it.
• 30:33
  Because.
• 30:34
  I ask you to be so good so much of the time.
• 30:37
  Totally.
• 30:38
  This is your time.
• 30:38
  It's totally fair enough.
• 30:40
  They are my anthropomorphizing that they are Exercising a sense of humor
• 30:46
  with me and with each other or are they actually and if they are If
• 30:52
  that's not coming from the prefrontal cortex, where's it coming from?
• 30:58
  Dr. Steven Peters: This is the fantastic million dollar question, Rupert.
• 31:02
  Because I've dissected out so many horse brains, and I'm amazed at the number
• 31:07
  of convolutions and the folded gyri and sulci, which means if you ironed out
• 31:13
  that brain, it would have a huge mass.
• 31:17
  And...
• 31:18
  What we've done with all animals, we treat them as lower mammals.
• 31:22
  Why?
• 31:23
  Because we, we, we use the standard of human intelligence, and we come up
• 31:29
  with human tasks to measure them by.
• 31:31
  Whereas they're, they're fantastic creatures as horses
• 31:36
  that we underappreciate.
• 31:37
  So as an evidence based person in my response, what I say is, well,
• 31:44
  so far, science hasn't shown this.
• 31:47
  In fact, most, you know, literature would show that there isn't a
• 31:51
  prefrontal cortex in the horse.
• 31:54
  But, you know, I would, I would say that those are arbitrary
• 31:58
  boundaries and they change over time.
• 32:01
  So what I tell people is.
• 32:03
  Look at the function.
• 32:04
  Don't look at where that boundary lies and says, well, this is prefrontal
• 32:09
  cortex and the horse doesn't actually have one because I know over time with
• 32:16
  the sophisticated medical instruments that we now have that I have no doubt
• 32:21
  that we are going to find that the horse has indeed has a prefrontal cortex and
• 32:26
  indeed is capable of of much more than we've ever given the horse credit for.
• 32:30
  We just haven't had a good way of measuring it.
• 32:33
  And our measurement style has been anthropomorphic.
• 32:36
  Got it.
• 32:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 32:37
  So, so yes.
• 32:38
  Could it be that there are parts of the horse brain that behave in a way like
• 32:42
  a prefrontal cortex, that we just as yet can't identify, but clearly we can
• 32:48
  see that behavior must be coming from somewhere because the, the behavior seems.
• 32:53
  Ubiquitous, to the species that they are, they are by nature, a
• 32:57
  very playful, species is one of the great, wonderful things about horses.
• 33:01
  But yes, if it's not coming from prefrontal cortex,
• 33:04
  if it's not coming from.
• 33:06
  a human type area of the brain where we would produce that from,
• 33:10
  or I'm going to play a joke on that person that's planning.
• 33:12
  That's logic.
• 33:12
  That's reason.
• 33:13
  That's emotional regulation.
• 33:15
  Yes, that's prefrontal cortex.
• 33:16
  If the horse doesn't appear to have one.
• 33:18
  It's fast.
• 33:19
  It's intriguing to me.
• 33:21
  What parts of the brain would be producing a similar type of response?
• 33:27
  do you think?
• 33:28
  Something
• 33:28
  Dr. Steven Peters: that I think it's just a matter of where we
• 33:30
  arbitrarily have drawn a fence line and we've come up with a criterion.
• 33:35
  This is prefrontal cortex because we say mice have prefrontal
• 33:38
  cortex, but we say a horse doesn't.
• 33:41
  And I think, you know, if you go back 20 years ago when I was in school, they said,
• 33:46
  Oh, the human brain reaches like age 25 and never ever grows any more neurons.
• 33:51
  Right.
• 33:52
  Well, we know that that's now false.
• 33:54
  Yeah.
• 33:54
  You know, and.
• 33:56
  Oftentimes things we said 20 years ago, almost seem ludicrous now, but we held
• 34:01
  it as if it were written in, in cement.
• 34:05
  I like to think of things much more out of the, the box.
• 34:09
  And I think you see the, the, behaviors you would associate
• 34:15
  with the prefrontal cortex.
• 34:17
  Do I have to point in the brain where that prefrontal cortex is?
• 34:21
  Listen to this.
• 34:22
  There's a guy Wilder Penfield.
• 34:24
  He was a Canadian neurosurgeon.
• 34:26
  And what he would do is he would stimulate electrically parts of people's brains.
• 34:32
  And he might say, okay, I'm going to go on this motor, the sensory strip
• 34:36
  here, and I'm just going to touch where, where the index finger is.
• 34:40
  And he may touch there.
• 34:41
  And that patient might say, well, that tingles my index finger.
• 34:45
  Another patient, exact same area.
• 34:48
  Cause stereotypically they can hone in right on that area.
• 34:51
  touches them there, they say, Oh, I feel that in my wrist.
• 34:54
  And then somebody else might say, well, I felt that up on my arm.
• 34:58
  So what we learn is that it's not like the textbooks.
• 35:03
  You look at a textbook and you got color coded areas of the brain.
• 35:07
  You know, somebody who's blind, for example, that's
• 35:11
  not just fallow back there.
• 35:13
  The occipital lobe, you know, that occipital lobe will say, okay, since
• 35:18
  we're not receiving input from the visual system, let's let's send
• 35:23
  some of that to auditory system.
• 35:26
  So we know that sometimes like blind musicians like Stevie Wonder or Ray
• 35:31
  Orbison, it appears that they may be using a lot more of their brain
• 35:37
  That they would be using for visual stimuli for auditory stimuli, which
• 35:41
  may give them perfect pitch or a better understanding of auditory because
• 35:45
  they're using so much more brain force.
• 35:48
  So, if you look at your brain, because it's like a snowflake
• 35:52
  your brain is not like my brain.
• 35:54
  It's based on all your experiences, your brain is just Oregon, which
• 35:59
  interacts with the world and creates something that helps us survive.
• 36:04
  And.
• 36:05
  Horses just because we're using a human measure to measure them.
• 36:10
  I think once we find functional MRI, we can do that.
• 36:13
  And for your listeners, that's a, that's imaging where we can
• 36:16
  look at the brain in real time.
• 36:19
  If we can do that with a horse and that's just down the road.
• 36:22
  then we'll be able to see some of these prefrontal behaviors and know
• 36:27
  exactly where that's coming from.
• 36:29
  And indeed we may redraw the map and say, Oh, well here's, here's
• 36:33
  the horse's prefrontal lobe.
• 36:36
  Rupert Isaacson: So it's, it's, it's possible to say maybe
• 36:38
  we haven't discovered it yet.
• 36:39
  Yeah.
• 36:39
  Because I mean, and when, when, when one observes.
• 36:43
  horses in a very natural setting or wild horses, they clearly are making
• 36:47
  complex decisions about that involves some planning, like when they're going
• 36:51
  to change, pastures, when they're going to go to water, when they're
• 36:56
  not going to go to water, being able to work around predator movements.
• 37:01
  they don't just blindly wander into them.
• 37:03
  They know more or less what the predator movements are
• 37:06
  and make decisions around it.
• 37:08
  but yes, where's it coming from?
• 37:10
  it's really interesting that you talk, talk about Penfield, right?
• 37:14
  there's a book I recently read.
• 37:16
  The body has a mind of its own about body matter.
• 37:19
  And one of the, one of the things that the authors of that book,
• 37:22
  touched upon was that equestrians.
• 37:26
  have a uniquely complex form of body mapping that they have to do because
• 37:32
  they have to make the entire horse a part of their body map, but the horse
• 37:36
  has to do the same thing to the rider.
• 37:38
  And this is why it's sort of a miracle that the thing can even happen.
• 37:42
  And then you've got these two completely different brains.
• 37:45
  trying to meld, but yet it happens.
• 37:47
  Yet this miracle happens.
• 37:49
  if, if, if we know that there are these main differences between the horse and
• 37:55
  the human brain, what, what do you think, is the main difference between, and then
• 38:04
  we talk about brains being snowflakes.
• 38:06
  My brain's not your brain.
• 38:08
  If we can respect that there are these differences between the
• 38:10
  horse and the human brain, what are the main differences between the
• 38:15
  neurotypical and the autistic brain?
• 38:19
  And then we might need to know both of those things if we're going to then
• 38:23
  work with those populations with horses.
• 38:27
  First we need to know, if I have a somewhat neurotypical brain, I
• 38:30
  need to know that the horse's brain has these fundamental differences
• 38:33
  that can give me a roadmap here.
• 38:35
  Now I need to work with these humans.
• 38:38
  that are like me and a little bit not like me.
• 38:40
  And then how do I put all three of us together in a triumvirate?
• 38:44
  Talk to us about the differences between the autistic brain
• 38:48
  and the neurotypical brain.
• 38:50
  If you, if you feel that there are some.
• 38:54
  Dr. Steven Peters: Yeah.
• 38:55
  well, one area that scientists looked at is, 37.
• 38:58
  Brodman's area 37.
• 39:04
  Area 37.
• 39:05
  Now Brodman was a neuroanatomist and he mapped out something like 53
• 39:12
  brain areas and said these areas are responsible for these, these behaviors.
• 39:19
  we don't use it much anymore because now we found there must be about
• 39:23
  350 different areas and it's more important how they're connected than
• 39:30
  the job that they necessarily do.
• 39:33
  And that that involves these dendrites long axons with white
• 39:38
  matter wrapping myelination.
• 39:41
  that allow us to learn.
• 39:44
  There's some thought that this area 37.
• 39:47
  Well, there's not thought about that because we call
• 39:49
  it the fusiform facial area.
• 39:54
  And when people in a functional MRI look at faces, that area lights up.
• 39:59
  Well, it doesn't seem to light up with people who are autistic.
• 40:04
  In fact, that area is used to interpret facial expression,
• 40:11
  social facial expression.
• 40:14
  And that doesn't seem to be happening with people who are autistic.
• 40:19
  And so for me, oftentimes even people I know well, out of
• 40:25
  context, I can't, I can't put the pieces of their face together.
• 40:29
  I may see their eyes and their nose and, and things, but I can't put it together.
• 40:35
  Let's say as Rupert.
• 40:37
  But then I hear your voice and it's in context and pretty soon it all
• 40:40
  comes together, but I get this like deer in the headlights lost look, even
• 40:45
  with people I know sometimes where I can't put all of that together.
• 40:49
  And then that impedes my social interaction, because I'm not picking
• 40:53
  up all those little nuances, you know, I bore the hell out of somebody and
• 40:57
  if everybody's yawning and, you know, or somebody's feeling threatened.
• 41:04
  if it's only in terms of their facial expression, I may have trouble picking
• 41:09
  that up, but oddly enough, I'm in, I recognize patterns very easily.
• 41:18
  You know, I recognize patterns that I don't understand that
• 41:20
  other people aren't picking up.
• 41:22
  And so when I go out and interact with a horse, that horse is giving me all
• 41:26
  these patterns, you know, I'm seeing, you know, where the head is, I'm seeing
• 41:31
  where the jaw is, you know, I'm, I'm noticing how tight they are, or how,
• 41:36
  you know, how wide their eye is.
• 41:39
  And so, almost like in a snapshot, I picked that all up.
• 41:43
  And I've come to think that that's, that's my neurodivergence that,
• 41:51
  that my brain sort of works that way and automatically sees patterns.
• 41:55
  I think that's why I love nature and I'm often a remote setting.
• 41:58
  Where I go out on hikes and I feel comfortable because I recognize all the
• 42:02
  patterns in, in nature, and it feels very at home like, but you send me to
• 42:08
  a cocktail party and I am at a loss.
• 42:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 42:13
  So, although I guess one could argue that a cocktail party is part
• 42:17
  of nature if humans are natural.
• 42:20
  Yeah, let's let's let's replace a campfire.
• 42:25
  but I guess at a campfire.
• 42:27
  You have the sort of option of engaging directly in the banter
• 42:32
  and the small talk or, you know, hanging back a bit and looking at
• 42:36
  the stars, but feeling connected.
• 42:38
  Whereas in a cocktail party, you're either doing the cut and thrust
• 42:43
  rapier, you know, fencing of wit, or you're not, and it's one or the other.
• 42:49
  And so you're either in or you're out, whereas in a more naturalistic.
• 42:55
  Social setting.
• 42:57
  you could have that going on and people with neurodivergence being able to
• 43:02
  be part of it as much or as little as they wanted, perhaps, you know,
• 43:05
  Dr. Steven Peters: there's so much so many idiosyncrasies and so many
• 43:08
  things that in this neurodivergence and it's different for for all of us.
• 43:13
  But that's why my wife is often saying, you know, are you just being
• 43:17
  an asshole or is this your, your.
• 43:21
  You know, your autism,
• 43:23
  Rupert Isaacson: my mom, my mom, listen to me, Dr.
• 43:26
  Freud, my mom, my wife says exactly the same thing to me, but
• 43:33
  Dr. Steven Peters: I can be laser focused hours yet.
• 43:36
  I'm easily distractible.
• 43:38
  So there's all these, you know, there's all these.
• 43:41
  inconsistencies.
• 43:42
  But when you, your original question was about the horse for, for me, where
• 43:48
  sensory overload can be a problem.
• 43:51
  I like for my messages to be very clear.
• 43:55
  And so I'm always trying to open up an avenue.
• 43:59
  And reduce the noise.
• 44:00
  I don't want sensory overload, so I need to reduce the noise
• 44:03
  so I can understand the signal.
• 44:06
  And so I, I interact with my horse that way.
• 44:08
  Am I bringing noise into our relationship?
• 44:12
  I have to be more clear in, in my communication with
• 44:16
  you so that we can connect.
• 44:19
  And I have to reduce the noise so I can understand what message
• 44:23
  you're sending back to me.
• 44:24
  And so it's this sensory communication between both of us that resets
• 44:32
  both of our nervous systems.
• 44:34
  At least that's the way it works for me.
• 44:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you feel that, because you do have trouble, processing,
• 44:42
  at least processing quickly, the multifarious, nuances of the human
• 44:48
  facial emotional thing that it then makes it easier for you to look at
• 44:54
  the emotional patterns in horses because they're not expressing it
• 44:57
  so much through the face like we do.
• 44:59
  It's not that they're not expressing it through the face, of course
• 45:02
  they are to some degree, but not to the insane degree that we do.
• 45:06
  Do you think that that makes it easier for you to observe the patterns?
• 45:12
  Dr. Steven Peters: You know, that's a good question.
• 45:14
  And, and, you know, some of this isn't even science related because
• 45:19
  I don't know if I can articulate.
• 45:21
  necessarily the, the communication so much you'd have to see it and say,
• 45:26
  okay, I see Steve with his horses and I, I have an idea of what, how
• 45:31
  they're communicating with, with each other because of how they're reacting.
• 45:36
  I'll give you an example is that, I insisted when I was seeing patients
• 45:42
  of going out into the waiting room and getting the patient.
• 45:45
  So they're not aware that they're being, you know, assessed at that time.
• 45:50
  So their, their guard is down a little bit.
• 45:52
  And that I'd watch and they would stand up maybe slowly, maybe shuffle a little bit.
• 45:58
  Maybe they'd have reduced eye blink.
• 46:00
  I'd almost have that patient diagnosed before I ever reached the exam room.
• 46:05
  And it was almost a snapshot.
• 46:09
  Of understanding, but I didn't get that in our interaction with looking,
• 46:13
  you know, recognizing in their face.
• 46:16
  It was more like a whole pattern that came at me out at once.
• 46:21
  And so it, it was just, it was an understanding that was immediate.
• 46:28
  And with the horse, I don't know that I can point out, oh, it's,
• 46:31
  you know, it's a thrashing tail.
• 46:33
  It's the head up above the withers.
• 46:35
  It's more just an immediate snapshot that.
• 46:42
  And you get a comfort level when you know you're accurate when you know
• 46:46
  that the horse knows, and you know that you understand that that horse.
• 46:54
  It's almost immediate but indescribable if you're going to try to for me
• 46:59
  to try to break it down into into science so I don't talk a lot about
• 47:05
  training the horse necessarily other than just setting up the best optimum
• 47:10
  environment for brain to work.
• 47:12
  Thank you.
• 47:13
  And, and then I understand that my autistic brain is, is
• 47:18
  different than most neurotypical.
• 47:20
  So I have to be careful that my esoteric experiences aren't, so much different
• 47:28
  than my audiences that they don't quite grasp what I'm trying to get across.
• 47:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you think that, people that are running,
• 47:36
  therapeutic writing programs, who obviously are going to have quite a
• 47:40
  lot of neurodivergent people there?
• 47:42
  And a lot of people with autism.
• 47:45
  is there perhaps a, an untapped, talent pool among these autists, particularly
• 47:54
  as they reach adulthood, if they spend enough time with the horses to come in as
• 48:00
  the trainers and maintainers of the horses that are doing this job, because the
• 48:06
  neurotypical people that are running these programs could then benefit from this.
• 48:12
  good pattern recognition that a lot of these autistic people, once
• 48:16
  they've got good familiarity with the horse could share with them and
• 48:22
  then bring them in less as clients and more as part of the team.
• 48:28
  Is that
• 48:28
  Dr. Steven Peters: something that's, that's a very interesting idea.
• 48:33
  Yeah.
• 48:33
  And, you know, we would be giving credit for, for something versus having it be
• 48:40
  unexplained and then treating the person as if that talent wasn't worthwhile.
• 48:48
  But, you know, putting that to use, I look at things sometimes neurochemically
• 48:57
  and you and I've had this discussion kind of, you know, we've touched on this
• 49:01
  before, but there are some scientists that, that wonder whether Horses over
• 49:07
  time haven't developed more serotonin receptors to allow them to be more
• 49:12
  emotionally balanced so they can interact with us, and survive in our environment.
• 49:19
  And so, I don't know that, that the autistic person's interaction with a horse
• 49:28
  isn't neurochemically setting the, their situation where they're actually on a
• 49:40
  cellular level, actually regulating each other's serotonin receptors, which creates
• 49:46
  an emotional balance between both animals.
• 49:51
  Rupert Isaacson: That certainly seems to be what in layman's terms would be, the
• 49:58
  horse just seems to like them, right?
• 50:00
  You know, you often observe this.
• 50:03
  And for many of us, well, that's a good enough thing.
• 50:09
  But again, getting back to where we were before with dendrites and axons, it's
• 50:12
  really good to know why things work.
• 50:14
  So what you just touched on there.
• 50:16
  So let's say for example, if domesticated mammals in general, probably, have
• 50:24
  learned to evolve their way into better serotonin, production so that they
• 50:30
  can deal with these funky monkeys that.
• 50:32
  have life or death power over them, i e us.
• 50:35
  and therefore, if the funky monkeys that then come into their purview, who
• 50:44
  seem more able to observe and interact with their patterns in a way that makes
• 50:50
  sense to that animal and therefore brings 'em to better point of safety,
• 50:54
  if it's coming down to co-regulation of each other's, serotonin again, I
• 51:01
  think what's wonderful about that is.
• 51:04
  It allows one to say, well, and perhaps it works because of this.
• 51:10
  It's not just that the horse irrationally likes them.
• 51:13
  It's got this neurochemical component.
• 51:16
  So therefore, once again, we can regulate, we can replicate it.
• 51:20
  this is something one could perhaps begin to develop or explore in programs.
• 51:24
  Because one of the things I'm very interested in is, is, is
• 51:26
  getting away from the paradigm of.
• 51:28
  I'm the service provider and you're the service user, you know, I'm the therapist
• 51:33
  in your that it's never like that.
• 51:35
  We know it's never like that.
• 51:37
  you know, I learned more about horses through working with my
• 51:39
  autistic son than I ever did.
• 51:43
  before I started working with him, he opened up vast horizons of new knowledge.
• 51:49
  For me, also about the brain, blah, blah, blah, blah, complete two way street.
• 51:53
  He completely made me understand about oxytocin and BDNF and other things,
• 51:59
  which I'd like to get into in a minute.
• 52:01
  I do feel that we have a paradigm within mental health that is exactly
• 52:07
  the same as our paradigm that you were talking about with some of the
• 52:10
  less good things of horse training, which is basically a power dynamic.
• 52:15
  And although that's understandable and somewhat natural to our species, it
• 52:22
  behoves us to try to get beyond it.
• 52:24
  When you bring, when you make those, neurochemical, succinct, easily repeatable
• 52:36
  phrases like, could it be that their neuro, that their serotonin levels are co
• 52:45
  regulating for this reason, and that this population of human and this population
• 52:50
  of horse have a good chemistry this way.
• 52:53
  People can understand that and it's useful.
• 52:57
  Dr. Steven Peters: You know, there's a scientist, Jeffrey Gray at King's
• 53:00
  College in London, and he was looking at activation of the amygdala.
• 53:05
  And that's a structure in the brain that we've associated with fear.
• 53:10
  And remember earlier I talked about having to feel safe.
• 53:13
  The horse constantly asking, am I safe?
• 53:15
  And you really can't learn.
• 53:16
  Even humans, if you think you're going to be beaten up by a gang member after
• 53:21
  class, then you certainly can't be focusing on your trigonometry homework.
• 53:27
  So what he found was that those mammals that had lower serotonin
• 53:33
  levels had a more active, amygdala.
• 53:39
  And those mammals with higher levels of serotonin had a less active, it
• 53:44
  dampened the activation of the amygdala.
• 53:48
  So it made us, it, it plays a chemical role in, in dampening down fear, thus
• 53:55
  allowing interaction between two.
• 54:00
  And this is more complicated than, than we look.
• 54:02
  This is sort of simplified, but if you think about it, It's always a
• 54:09
  neurochemical cocktail of some kind.
• 54:13
  That's how Martin Black and I look at it.
• 54:14
  And he says, you know, you're, you're actually a bartender when you're
• 54:18
  dealing with these horses, because if you have too much norepinephrine, then
• 54:22
  they can't get the norepinephrine will have them too sympathetically aroused.
• 54:27
  So they can't become curious, right?
• 54:29
  If you have too much oxytocin, then they're not going to
• 54:33
  want to be away from the herd.
• 54:36
  because they're going to want to feel that huge dose of oxytocin
• 54:40
  where they feel safe and bonded.
• 54:43
  So you have to almost introduce a new chemical.
• 54:46
  Well, how about let's go out for this trail ride and I'll give you
• 54:51
  some problems to solve and you'll get some big dopamine hits along the way.
• 54:56
  which will then, you know, counteract that withdrawal symptom of oxytocin.
• 55:01
  So it's always this neurochemical balance.
• 55:04
  And if we can find those ways to, to, work with that system and
• 55:10
  mix the best cocktails, then we're going to have the best outcomes.
• 55:14
  Rupert Isaacson: I 100% agree.
• 55:16
  so for example, when we were trying to understand why First, my son
• 55:22
  and then other kids were becoming verbal and communicative, who
• 55:26
  were, who were severely autistic and severely uncommunicative on horses
• 55:30
  in collection, in soft collection.
• 55:34
  again and again and again and again and again.
• 55:36
  a certain number of neuroscientists pointed out an oxytocin connection there
• 55:40
  and also oxytocin, helping with bringing down the amygdala response, the fight,
• 55:46
  flight, freeze response and the cortisol.
• 55:49
  stress hormone blocking the intellect.
• 55:52
  Okay.
• 55:53
  And then, we had it explained to us that although most, hormones are producing
• 56:01
  relatively localized areas of the body, oxytocin, the communication hormone, as
• 56:05
  well as the pleasure hormone get will be produced in your gut in all your other
• 56:09
  organs as well, make its way up to the pituitary gland and sing like a choir.
• 56:14
  and get this even bigger effect because it, for various
• 56:17
  reasons, our bodies want it.
• 56:18
  but that at the same time, because of this activation of the gut through the
• 56:22
  hip rocking, you're getting serotonin.
• 56:24
  And then at the, at the same time, you're getting dopamine as
• 56:27
  you say, because there's, you're now problem solving as you go.
• 56:30
  Even if the problem solving is simply finding your balance, let
• 56:33
  alone actually, an activity.
• 56:36
  And then of course there's endorphins kicking in.
• 56:39
  And so, yes, I totally agree with you.
• 56:44
  with horses now and when we're working with people and I'm not just talking
• 56:47
  autistic people with myself, I'm always looking exactly as you say, like a
• 56:53
  bartender to, to dose myself on these, neurochemicals, which I know my body will
• 56:59
  produce or will be produced in the horse's body or will be produced in, in the, in
• 57:04
  the, client's body or the kid's body.
• 57:06
  You, however, mentioned a word.
• 57:10
  That I don't know.
• 57:10
  So I'm gonna ask you to repeat it.
• 57:12
  Neuro
• 57:16
  Dr. Steven Peters: Oh, no, epinephrine.
• 57:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Let's, let's, let's just spell that out for me,
• 57:21
  cause I'm, I'm writing it down.
• 57:22
  Down.
• 57:23
  N o r
• 57:24
  Dr. Steven Peters: n o r e P i N
• 57:28
  Rupert Isaacson: e P i N.
• 57:32
  Dr. Steven Peters: Let me write it down.
• 57:34
  No, N oei.
• 57:39
  N e
• 57:40
  Rupert Isaacson: E p.
• 57:41
  I N E
• 57:44
  Dr. Steven Peters: t h t h e r I n.
• 57:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Wow.
• 57:50
  That's a, that's a doozy.
• 57:51
  That sounds like a, a challenge.
• 57:53
  Thailand or something.
• 57:55
  Wow.
• 58:00
  Nof.
• 58:00
  Norepinephrine.
• 58:02
  Norepinephrine nor, no, no.
• 58:04
  Pin, no.
• 58:05
  I think, I think I've written it down wrong.
• 58:06
  Can you do it?
• 58:08
  Sorry.
• 58:08
  my listeners, but please bear with us because this, this is something we need.
• 58:12
  Can, can you spell it out for me again please?
• 58:14
  Yeah.
• 58:15
  Dr. Steven Peters: N O.
• 58:15
  R.
• 58:16
  N.
• 58:16
  O.
• 58:16
  R.
• 58:17
  E.
• 58:18
  P.
• 58:18
  I.
• 58:19
  Rupert Isaacson: P.
• 58:19
  I.
• 58:20
  P.
• 58:20
  H.
• 58:21
  Dr. Steven Peters: P.
• 58:21
  H.
• 58:25
  E.
• 58:25
  R.
• 58:25
  I.
• 58:26
  N.
• 58:26
  E.
• 58:27
  E.
• 58:27
  R.
• 58:27
  I.
• 58:27
  N.
• 58:28
  E.
• 58:29
  Nora.
• 58:30
  Nora Epinephrine.
• 58:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Nora Epinephrine.
• 58:35
  Yeah.
• 58:35
  Okay.
• 58:36
  Talk to us about
• 58:37
  Dr. Steven Peters: that.
• 58:37
  What is that?
• 58:38
  Yeah, that plays a major role in the, in the nervous system.
• 58:42
  We need a small amount of Nora Epinephrine to alert, What
• 58:47
  it'll do, it sensitizes neurons.
• 58:50
  It sensitizes the amygdala.
• 58:52
  It's a sensitizer.
• 58:54
  So if we have a
• 58:55
  Rupert Isaacson: small amount mean, what does that mean?
• 58:56
  What does that mean?
• 58:57
  We don't even know what that means.
• 58:58
  Dr. Steven Peters: What it means it makes neurons more active.
• 59:02
  Okay.
• 59:04
  And turbo boost fuel need a small amount of norepinephrine
• 59:08
  so that I can pay attention.
• 59:10
  So my brain can say, Hey, this is important.
• 59:12
  I better focus on this.
• 59:13
  But if I get too much.
• 59:16
  Right.
• 59:17
  Then it's going to turn into, to cortisol and run that entire circuitry.
• 59:24
  Will
• 59:24
  Rupert Isaacson: it cortisol or could it equally turn into something
• 59:27
  better, something more pleasurable?
• 59:29
  Or will it always go to...
• 59:30
  If it's at
• 59:31
  Dr. Steven Peters: low levels, it can turn into something more pleasurable.
• 59:34
  So let's say I have a low level of norepinephrine that's allowing me to
• 59:38
  pay attention to what you're telling me.
• 59:40
  You tell me something then that is so interesting, it creates a dopamine hit
• 59:46
  on my brain and actually takes a couple of neurons and, and fastens them together
• 59:51
  to broaden my, my neural network.
• 59:54
  And I get a dopamine hit and it feels good.
• 59:56
  And the norepinephrine helped me focus my attention long enough, because your
• 1:00:02
  brain is only made up of what you've ever paid attention to in your life.
• 1:00:07
  That's why your brain is so different than mine.
• 1:00:09
  It's what you focused on, paid attention and your norepinephrine
• 1:00:13
  helped you to do that.
• 1:00:14
  However, if I had too much norepinephrine in my system, it
• 1:00:18
  would sensitize the amygdala and I'd be worried and I'd be stressed.
• 1:00:23
  And I would, I would come apart and under that, that constant high
• 1:00:31
  dose of norepinephrine, actually it would shrink the window of
• 1:00:35
  what I would be able to tolerate.
• 1:00:37
  And so my nervous system would actually reset and I'd be hyper alert, worried
• 1:00:42
  all the time, anxious, filled with anxiety and flooded with norepinephrine.
• 1:00:48
  What
• 1:00:50
  Rupert Isaacson: what creates and where, what creates norepinephrine
• 1:00:52
  and where is it created in the
• 1:00:53
  Dr. Steven Peters: body?
• 1:00:54
  Thank you.
• 1:00:55
  norepinephrine is created in an area called the locus
• 1:00:58
  coeruleus in the brainstem.
• 1:01:01
  The locus coeruleus, it's Latin for blue area.
• 1:01:04
  because that's what it looked like when they died it and, and, and looked at it.
• 1:01:08
  So I need some, but it quickly gets to the amygdala, it quickly gets to
• 1:01:14
  the hippocampus, and the hippocampus is a structure related to memory.
• 1:01:18
  So I don't want to necessarily be sensitizing the hippocampus.
• 1:01:22
  Amygdala and the hippocampus at the same time, because then
• 1:01:26
  I'm creating a fear memory.
• 1:01:28
  I'm creating a trauma, even a small trauma, but a trauma nonetheless.
• 1:01:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so how do we, how do we what, what causes the
• 1:01:41
  norepinephrine to be, produced?
• 1:01:43
  Like is, is it movement based, sympathetic arousal.
• 1:01:47
  Yeah, but arousal, there's many, there's so many forms of arousal and
• 1:01:52
  epinephrine before the arousal or is the arousal the cause of the norepinephrine?
• 1:01:58
  Dr. Steven Peters: Let's say I'm constantly in my system going to
• 1:02:00
  have some degree of norepinephrine unless I must sleep on my feet.
• 1:02:04
  So I get my horse for example, and I take them out to teach them something.
• 1:02:11
  And I noticed that.
• 1:02:13
  their head starts to come up above the withers, that their eyes get wide.
• 1:02:17
  So I say, you know what, we're reaching a point where we're getting
• 1:02:20
  too much norepinephrine here.
• 1:02:21
  I'm going to let you reset your nervous system.
• 1:02:24
  So I step back, I pause, the horse's head comes down, they start to lick
• 1:02:29
  and chew, they start to feel more comfortable, then we re approach that.
• 1:02:33
  And each time we do that, we widen that window of tolerance so
• 1:02:37
  norepinephrine on board, It's not overwhelming the system, but let's
• 1:02:44
  say I don't answer that question.
• 1:02:46
  My horse's head comes above the withers.
• 1:02:48
  The eyes get a little wide.
• 1:02:50
  I keep pressuring my horse, their head now comes way up.
• 1:02:54
  I see these tendons tighten in their jaw.
• 1:02:57
  They start to look for a way to escape.
• 1:02:59
  So they're already starting to think fight or flight.
• 1:03:01
  And if I keep pressuring the horse, trying to teach them something in
• 1:03:04
  that state, they're now flooded with too much norepinephrine.
• 1:03:08
  I know it's starting to go to the amygdala.
• 1:03:10
  And I know that the next response, if they're more threatened is, is a
• 1:03:15
  default to fight or flight cortisol.
• 1:03:18
  So it's an art of learning how to set and reset the nervous system
• 1:03:24
  enough times so that the horse knows that they can come down the other
• 1:03:28
  side, find that pause and relax.
• 1:03:32
  before the next.
• 1:03:33
  It's almost like you.
• 1:03:34
  If you were on a diving board, if I let you walk out there and then walk back,
• 1:03:39
  you have an internal locus of control.
• 1:03:41
  You sit on the edge of the diving board, dangle your feet over.
• 1:03:45
  And then you sit on the board and fall into the pool and then
• 1:03:48
  eventually dive off pretty soon.
• 1:03:50
  You're doing great.
• 1:03:52
  And your window of tolerance is pretty wide.
• 1:03:54
  So you're, you're feeling really comfortable with that.
• 1:03:57
  You had some norepinephrine aboard that made you, well, I better pay attention.
• 1:04:02
  I don't want to fall off the board.
• 1:04:03
  I better pay attention.
• 1:04:04
  I don't want to just drop off the edge of the board and suck up a bunch of water.
• 1:04:09
  But what if I stood behind you and I kept pushing you and you start to dig your
• 1:04:14
  feet in now you're so sympathetically aroused you're filled with norepinephrine
• 1:04:19
  and then let's say I throw you in and you take in a bunch of water in your
• 1:04:22
  lungs and you get up and you're coughing.
• 1:04:25
  Now, that whole situation has become traumatized so that
• 1:04:29
  standing on that diving board is a different experience the next day.
• 1:04:33
  based on neurochemically what I've done to you because of what neurochemicals
• 1:04:37
  were at what level of arousal.
• 1:04:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:04:41
  So basically it sounds like you've just explained from a neuroscientist point of
• 1:04:45
  view, the concept of less is more and the concept of softly, softly catchy monkey.
• 1:04:51
  And although those are common sense things, because we observed that if
• 1:04:58
  you don't do them, things go wrong.
• 1:05:01
  Again, it's really helpful to be able to say.
• 1:05:06
  Look, the reason why you don't want to push for that extra step in the
• 1:05:12
  training, or the reason why you want to now leave the horse alone a little
• 1:05:17
  bit, or the reason why you want to leave that kid alone a little bit now.
• 1:05:22
  Or the reason why you want to let them come to a concept as gradually as
• 1:05:27
  possible is that you're avoiding this neuropinephrine thing, which they need
• 1:05:33
  just enough of to pay attention and learn.
• 1:05:36
  But if we push it over the edge, we're going to fuck up everything
• 1:05:40
  we're trying to learn because cortisol is going to come in and
• 1:05:43
  just stomp on it like a big old boot.
• 1:05:46
  And then we'll have to start all over again from the beginning.
• 1:05:49
  This.
• 1:05:50
  People can get because I think I think what's tricky is that yeah Less is more
• 1:05:56
  and softly softly catchy monkey and go gradually and all of these things.
• 1:06:00
  Yes, they're common sense however, there are only common sense to people who have
• 1:06:06
  a sort of innate personality that way and Others who don't who are very impatient.
• 1:06:11
  I've been very impatient in my younger life you come to it
• 1:06:15
  by making a bunch of mistakes.
• 1:06:18
  However, if we're trying to help people not to have to make quite the
• 1:06:22
  same number of mistakes that I made, say, it's useful to have these terms.
• 1:06:28
  because, because they're understandable.
• 1:06:30
  So, norepinephrofen.
• 1:06:32
  Dr. Steven Peters: Norepinephrine.
• 1:06:33
  Rupert Isaacson: Norepinephrine.
• 1:06:36
  Let's say it three times.
• 1:06:37
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:06:37
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:06:39
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:06:40
  Now it's in my brain.
• 1:06:41
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:06:42
  You got it.
• 1:06:43
  Dr. Steven Peters: and when we're done, go look it up and then you'll see the
• 1:06:45
  difference between pad and adrenaline.
• 1:06:47
  It's one to put in your toolbox and, and, and be
• 1:06:50
  Rupert Isaacson: aware of.
• 1:06:51
  Is norepinephrine a, a, a hormone or is it a...
• 1:06:55
  Dr. Steven Peters: Yes, it's a hormone and a neurotransmitter as many of these
• 1:06:59
  Rupert Isaacson: are.
• 1:06:59
  So therefore it's also a protein, would that be correct?
• 1:07:02
  Yeah.
• 1:07:04
  Okay, okay.
• 1:07:06
  And.
• 1:07:07
  In small doses good and in big doses not so good basically, right
• 1:07:11
  Dr. Steven Peters: if i'm sensitizing Your brain, I don't
• 1:07:14
  want to hypersensitize you right?
• 1:07:17
  And it's interesting that you brought up if you, if you screw it up, you
• 1:07:21
  have to go back to the beginning.
• 1:07:23
  Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  If you screw it up, you can't get back to the beginning.
• 1:07:26
  You were at before, you know, you're actually two steps behind
• 1:07:31
  the beginning when you come back
• 1:07:33
  Rupert Isaacson: at it.
• 1:07:34
  You've created trauma.
• 1:07:35
  I mean, this, I, I saw so often in, the worst kind of behavioral, approaches
• 1:07:40
  with autistic kids when my son was very young and these kids were just.
• 1:07:44
  Would get to a point where they were trying to climb through the wall or
• 1:07:48
  climb through the door or climb over the person and you had exactly the
• 1:07:52
  same thing being said by the therapist that people would say about horses
• 1:07:56
  See, they're being disrespectful.
• 1:07:58
  They're being this they're being that and saying no, man, they're just terrified
• 1:08:02
  They're just terrified and I remember thinking Wow as a horseman if I was in a
• 1:08:07
  rampen with a horse and they were trying to climb out over the fucking fence to get
• 1:08:11
  out when I'm trying to do something, then presumably I should change something about
• 1:08:16
  what I'm doing or I'm going to get killed.
• 1:08:18
  Forget the horse.
• 1:08:19
  I'm going to get killed.
• 1:08:20
  but of course, because it's only a child and we're adults and we
• 1:08:22
  can overall Children with our greater physical strength and size.
• 1:08:26
  This doesn't come into the picture until the child gets big
• 1:08:29
  enough to to physically hurt you.
• 1:08:32
  And then, of course, they resort to drugs to, Control that behavior.
• 1:08:36
  And so it seems to me that the problem is always about the idea of
• 1:08:41
  trying to control behavior, right?
• 1:08:43
  Dr. Steven Peters: Exactly.
• 1:08:44
  We want to be in charge of this because we feel uncomfortable.
• 1:08:48
  It's getting out of control.
• 1:08:49
  So I'm going to control.
• 1:08:51
  But one of the most stressful things that you can do to a horse
• 1:08:54
  is restrain them confinement.
• 1:08:57
  If you look at, at when most of the wrecks occur, it's that yank
• 1:09:01
  around, I'm clamped onto the horse.
• 1:09:03
  I'm, you know, I'm forcing the horse.
• 1:09:05
  So restraint actually increases sympathetic arousal instead of
• 1:09:10
  brings it back, back down again.
• 1:09:13
  I think one of the things most missing because we're egotistical,
• 1:09:18
  we want to make things happen.
• 1:09:20
  Is there that we don't use the pause enough and allowing the nervous system
• 1:09:27
  to reset the brain is fantastic.
• 1:09:30
  It can replay things that happen.
• 1:09:32
  Well, and make those neuronal connections.
• 1:09:36
  All we can do is interrupt those if we keep drilling and grinding
• 1:09:41
  away without allowing the brain to assimilate those in a good way.
• 1:09:45
  And sometimes the greatest gift to give our horse is space.
• 1:09:50
  Rupert Isaacson: 100%.
• 1:09:51
  You know, you're probably aware of the legendary, , Portuguese, , horse trainer
• 1:09:55
  from the 20th century, Nuno Oliveira.
• 1:09:58
  And one of his great quotes was, , when your horse has made a really good
• 1:10:02
  try dismount, don't end the session, smoke a cigarette down to its butt,
• 1:10:13
  take all your attention away from the horse and allow him to simply.
• 1:10:18
  Pause, then remount and go on.
• 1:10:23
  And I remember reading that and as an autism dad go, well,
• 1:10:27
  that makes sense actually.
• 1:10:28
  So I started doing that and I don't smoke.
• 1:10:31
  So what I do is let's say I'm training something.
• 1:10:34
  He was using the PF.
• 1:10:35
  , so something that's complex where the horse has to give, you know, really a
• 1:10:40
  hundred percent attention and a hundred percent buy in, , in order to pull
• 1:10:44
  everything in the brain body together.
• 1:10:46
  And, . So now, particularly when I'm training anything complex like that, I
• 1:10:51
  look for, I feel for a try, a good try.
• 1:10:55
  And then I do exactly, I dismount, but I don't smoke.
• 1:10:57
  So I do texts.
• 1:10:59
  I'll pull my phone out and I'll look in a different direction, but I
• 1:11:03
  hang with the horse at his shoulder.
• 1:11:05
  And I might keep a hand on him or, or, or scratch him or whatever.
• 1:11:08
  But basically my attention has gone away.
• 1:11:10
  And I answer a couple of emails and actually my attention does go away because
• 1:11:14
  suddenly I do need to answer this email.
• 1:11:16
  And I, what I realized is it works for me too.
• 1:11:19
  Gets me out of that neuro epiprofen over aroused thing, because we know that
• 1:11:26
  we, when we train horses, we ourselves as funky monkeys can get a little
• 1:11:30
  bit intense about the whole thing.
• 1:11:33
  And I think the same is true.
• 1:11:34
  Obviously, when we're working.
• 1:11:36
  As in, in a therapeutic environment, we're so, for the best of reasons, wanting
• 1:11:43
  to get a good result and deliver that.
• 1:11:46
  Sometimes we can push, , and to be able to put it in those terms, neuro ibuprofen,
• 1:11:52
  , and say, let's try and avoid that.
• 1:11:55
  Let's allow pauses.
• 1:11:57
  So again, when you go to
• 1:11:58
  Dr. Steven Peters: sleep that night, there's a neurochemical
• 1:12:01
  acetylcholine your brain.
• 1:12:03
  How do you spell that?
• 1:12:06
  Boy, you're giving me some real.
• 1:12:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Acetylcholine.
• 1:12:10
  Acetylcholine was a waitress, I think, at a diner that I used to go to in Virginia.
• 1:12:15
  Acetylcholine.
• 1:12:19
  Okay.
• 1:12:20
  Uh,
• 1:12:21
  Dr. Steven Peters: A C e A c e t y t Y l t y l c h o l i n
• 1:12:30
  Rupert Isaacson: e c h o l i n E.
• 1:12:32
  I'm gonna read it back to you.
• 1:12:34
  A C e t y l c h o l i n E.
• 1:12:44
  That's it.
• 1:12:45
  Acetylcholine.
• 1:12:45
  Acetylcholine.
• 1:12:47
  Okay.
• 1:12:47
  Acetylcholine.
• 1:12:48
  Tell me about this acetylcholine thing.
• 1:12:50
  What's this acetylcholine thing?
• 1:12:55
  Dr. Steven Peters: You know, when you learn something, your brain just doesn't,
• 1:12:59
  , just pop up neurons any old where, right?
• 1:13:03
  As you sleep, you, you'll prune off and weekend synapses that
• 1:13:09
  aren't helpful to you as you, as you get better at doing something.
• 1:13:13
  And the cetylcholine almost goes in like a magic marker and a highlighter.
• 1:13:17
  We're going to make a connection here.
• 1:13:20
  The best connection would be here.
• 1:13:22
  The next best connection would be here.
• 1:13:24
  And then those neurons go and connect that way.
• 1:13:27
  So, what happens is, If you recall, when you first learned to ride a bicycle
• 1:13:32
  and the training wheels came off, you would get reach a point of diminishing
• 1:13:37
  returns trying to ride that day.
• 1:13:40
  And you think I'm never going to learn this.
• 1:13:42
  But then you went to sleep at night and you had a pause and
• 1:13:46
  your brain got to replay this.
• 1:13:48
  And acetylcholine said, no, if you would have hooked this to this, and
• 1:13:52
  you would have changed this, so your neural networks actually form new
• 1:13:56
  connections, the next day, somehow, magically, you've gotten better.
• 1:14:02
  And all we can do is interrupt that process with the horse when they've
• 1:14:06
  gotten something and understand it.
• 1:14:09
  Our ego says, let's do it again, let's do it again, let's do it again.
• 1:14:12
  Then they check out.
• 1:14:13
  And then, then we reach diminishing returns.
• 1:14:15
  Now they do it worse.
• 1:14:17
  So we feel like we have to pundit, we have to get after him even more to get
• 1:14:20
  back to where we were when you got it.
• 1:14:22
  That's the time to pause and let the brain do its work.
• 1:14:25
  And especially overnight, because if you leave them in a good neurochemical state,
• 1:14:31
  the next day, they'll be twice as good.
• 1:14:35
  I guarantee
• 1:14:37
  Rupert Isaacson: you.
• 1:14:37
  Go ahead.
• 1:14:38
  Sorry.
• 1:14:39
  Dr. Steven Peters: If you push it and you stress them out and you
• 1:14:42
  create a trauma, you can also wire this in a way you may not want.
• 1:14:48
  So that horse may be twice as bad the next day.
• 1:14:53
  If you've decided you're going to create a fight.
• 1:14:55
  Right.
• 1:14:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Neuroplasticity can be negative as well as positive, right?
• 1:14:58
  One can go in a good way.
• 1:15:00
  , So, are you saying that we produce more acetylcholine at night?
• 1:15:05
  Dr. Steven Peters: At night it does a certain, a different job.
• 1:15:07
  We need acetylcholine, it helps us pay attention as well.
• 1:15:11
  It helps us focus, because where your attention goes, this is a little, phrase
• 1:15:17
  that neuroscientists use, where attention goes, neural, neural connections grow.
• 1:15:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:15:25
  , thoughts become things basically,
• 1:15:28
  Dr. Steven Peters: right?
• 1:15:28
  Exactly.
• 1:15:29
  And when you do that, you fire that neuron and then if you fire it again
• 1:15:36
  and you got it right, it stimulates a myelin wrapping that then allows
• 1:15:41
  things to travel more efficiently without loss of information and faster.
• 1:15:46
  So, as you rewire your brain in this fashion.
• 1:15:51
  There's a, a neuroimaging called diffusion tensor imaging, and you can
• 1:15:57
  look at the white matter and let's say I saw a kid who was a piano protege.
• 1:16:03
  The areas of his brain that he uses to play the piano are gonna
• 1:16:08
  be so puffy with white matter.
• 1:16:10
  He'll have layer after layer of that wrapping on there.
• 1:16:15
  This, this one, the white is the
• 1:16:16
  Rupert Isaacson: wrapping.
• 1:16:17
  It's, it's the insulation on the white.
• 1:16:18
  It's the
• 1:16:19
  Dr. Steven Peters: information highway.
• 1:16:21
  That is more important in learning than necessarily the parts of the brain.
• 1:16:26
  So when we point and say, Oh, look at, you know, that's the
• 1:16:30
  part that works the finger.
• 1:16:31
  It's better to say, this is a complex system, and it's the wiring and the
• 1:16:37
  information highway that's actually.
• 1:16:40
  the key to
• 1:16:42
  Rupert Isaacson: the efficiency of how the information is passed along the highway.
• 1:16:45
  Absolutely.
• 1:16:46
  And the more insulation it has, the more myelination it has, the more of
• 1:16:51
  the white matter it has insulating the wire, the smoother it's going to go.
• 1:16:56
  You got it.
• 1:16:57
  Okay.
• 1:16:57
  So here's a question though.
• 1:16:59
  Do we, do we produce more?
• 1:17:03
  A
• 1:17:05
  Dr. Steven Peters: acetylcholine.
• 1:17:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Acetylcholine, , do we, I'm gonna do this in text action kinda.
• 1:17:10
  Do we, do we all produce, do our asses produce more acetylcholine when we all,
• 1:17:14
  when our asses are asleep at night?
• 1:17:16
  Or do we produce an equal amount of it?
• 1:17:18
  Whe whether we, awake or asleep.
• 1:17:20
  Why is the sleeping part of it so important?
• 1:17:24
  Dr. Steven Peters: I think it has a different job to do in
• 1:17:27
  sleep because in sleep we don't have all the outside distractions
• 1:17:35
  because interrupting our attention.
• 1:17:39
  Acetylcholine has to help us with our attention focusing it.
• 1:17:42
  But when we're asleep We don't, we don't have that same demand.
• 1:17:47
  And so we can go and do our rewiring.
• 1:17:51
  That's when we're assimilating all this information.
• 1:17:54
  That's where some neuroscientists think our dreams are just things
• 1:17:59
  that we've taken in during the day that we're then assimilating
• 1:18:02
  in the, in the brain at night.
• 1:18:05
  So the acetylcholine, I can't say that there's more acetylcholine produced at
• 1:18:10
  night, but acetylcholine's job changes.
• 1:18:14
  to okay solidifying the wiring.
• 1:18:18
  Rupert Isaacson: So is acetylcholine at night when it
• 1:18:22
  becomes its meta effectiveness?
• 1:18:25
  That's what we call sleeping on it.
• 1:18:27
  Yes.
• 1:18:28
  Yeah.
• 1:18:30
  Basically we want to go sleep with acetylcholine.
• 1:18:33
  Dr. Steven Peters: we do okay.
• 1:18:34
  We want, we wanna have a, an affair with acetacholine.
• 1:18:37
  Rupert Isaacson: We wanna have an intimate relationship with acetylcholine.
• 1:18:39
  Got it.
• 1:18:40
  Okay.
• 1:18:41
  So we want to pause,
• 1:18:43
  Dr. Steven Peters: because what happens if you don't sleep?
• 1:18:45
  Your attention goes out the window.
• 1:18:47
  Yeah.
• 1:18:47
  And, and if you, after a while, you get sleep deprived over a number of days.
• 1:18:53
  Yeah.
• 1:18:53
  Your attention span really shrinks.
• 1:18:57
  In fact, if you did it long enough, you'd probably start to hallucinate.
• 1:19:01
  And that's what happens with people that are sleep deprived for long
• 1:19:04
  periods of time where their bodies are just trying desperately to get
• 1:19:09
  Rupert Isaacson: to sleep.
• 1:19:13
  Okay.
• 1:19:14
  So,
• 1:19:14
  norepinephrine, norepinephrine, norepinephrine, norepinephrine,
• 1:19:18
  why can't I get it right?
• 1:19:19
  I'm going to try it again.
• 1:19:20
  Maybe, maybe a southern accent will help me.
• 1:19:22
  Norepinephrine, norepinephrine.
• 1:19:24
  Y'all got some norepinephrine.
• 1:19:26
  I got some good norepinephrine right there, right there.
• 1:19:29
  And so that's, that's gonna, that's going to stimulate.
• 1:19:36
  a little bit good, too much, not good over into the red zone.
• 1:19:42
  So we want some of that for attention.
• 1:19:45
  And then we want some, acetylcholine, acetylcholine to, to help us to then
• 1:19:52
  build the, white matter, the, the, the myceliation, that the, the insulation
• 1:19:56
  along the, the wires that, and if we sleep on it, If we stop before
• 1:20:05
  we go to a red zone and then allow a sleep cycle pause, then when we come
• 1:20:11
  back the next day, we've allowed.
• 1:20:18
  Dr. Steven Peters: We've, we've reduced a lot of the noise.
• 1:20:21
  And so by, by hearing off the, the, the synapses that we don't need by
• 1:20:28
  weakening them and strengthening others.
• 1:20:30
  Right.
• 1:20:31
  Then we, we actually bring a different brain to work the next
• 1:20:34
  Rupert Isaacson: day.
• 1:20:35
  Right.
• 1:20:35
  So what it often feels to me, for myself, for my horses and for a
• 1:20:40
  lot of the people I work with.
• 1:20:42
  Is that over time when we do this, we effectively grow ourselves a new
• 1:20:45
  brain, you know, I am, I become a different person over a certain number
• 1:20:50
  of days over a certain number of months over a certain number of years.
• 1:20:53
  The horse certainly does, the, you know, we get these horses
• 1:20:56
  that come in and start with, you know, effectively no fucking way.
• 1:21:01
  And then they go to me and then they go to, and then they go to, okay.
• 1:21:06
  And then they go to at your service.
• 1:21:08
  And we, we observe this process time and time again, and what I've generally
• 1:21:14
  put it down to through the explanation of neuroscience is, is BDNF, Brain
• 1:21:18
  Derived Neurotrophic Factor, i.
• 1:21:21
  e.
• 1:21:21
  neuroplasticity, kicking in through moving and problem solving.
• 1:21:25
  That's how it's been explained to me.
• 1:21:27
  Are these two components neuro, neuro, neuroepiprofen?
• 1:21:35
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:21:36
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:21:38
  Norepinephrine.
• 1:21:40
  And acetylcholine.
• 1:21:43
  Aspects of BDNF, they must also be proteins, right, to somebody,
• 1:21:47
  because BDNF is a protein.
• 1:21:49
  Are they aspects of brain derived neurotrophic factor that
• 1:21:54
  Are they things that a, yeah.
• 1:21:56
  Positive
• 1:21:56
  Dr. Steven Peters: tell.
• 1:21:57
  Ok.
• 1:21:58
  Not to get too far afield, but let's draw that.
• 1:22:01
  All that picture all together.
• 1:22:03
  Cortisol, we call that a, glucocorticoid.
• 1:22:07
  A glucocorticoid, right?
• 1:22:10
  Stress, much cortisol, right?
• 1:22:12
  So if we have too much glucocorticoid on board, we're stressed out, right?
• 1:22:18
  But if, if we're resilient to stress, if we brought been brought up in
• 1:22:24
  a loving environment, nurturing environment, we can create what's
• 1:22:30
  called glucocorticoid receptors.
• 1:22:34
  What these glucocorticoid receptors do is they'll take the
• 1:22:36
  glucocorticoid and mediate it.
• 1:22:40
  so that it won't have that impact.
• 1:22:42
  So the more glucocorticoid receptors you have, the more
• 1:22:45
  resilient you are to stress.
• 1:22:48
  And we find like rat pups who lick their pups, those pups grow up
• 1:22:52
  feeling loved and feel they have more glucocorticoid receptors.
• 1:22:56
  So they're more resistant to stress.
• 1:22:59
  So there's now a connection between the amount of glucocorticoid
• 1:23:05
  receptors and the amount of BDNF that you have in your, in your system.
• 1:23:12
  BDNF, we know that, that, you can produce that by exercise and movement, right?
• 1:23:19
  But also you can optimize that by feeling safe.
• 1:23:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:23:25
  So environment has a big part of it and mammalian care.
• 1:23:29
  So oxytocin must have a big part of it then because they must be getting
• 1:23:35
  Dr. Steven Peters: right.
• 1:23:35
  And now you're starting to really put together the pieces.
• 1:23:39
  that this truly is a cocktail that's very complicated that
• 1:23:45
  we have to keep measuring.
• 1:23:47
  so when people tell me, you know, well, dopamine does this
• 1:23:50
  and that explains everything.
• 1:23:52
  Well, that's just one of the things that you're taking out of
• 1:23:55
  your bar here and mixing together.
• 1:23:58
  And so Martin Black would tell me the guy, Tom Dorrance, who
• 1:24:01
  was so affected with horses.
• 1:24:03
  Martin describes him as the master bartender that he couldn't articulate
• 1:24:08
  what was going on, but he kept, he take those horses that were maybe docile and,
• 1:24:13
  and, and passive and bring up energy in them, not stress them, but bring
• 1:24:19
  up energy and the opposite horses that seemed highly stressed, he could bring
• 1:24:24
  them down and make them feel comfortable.
• 1:24:26
  So there were things that he was doing to create a cocktail
• 1:24:30
  regardless of where the horse was.
• 1:24:32
  In this whole spectrum of behaviors, it, we all have neurochemicals in us,
• 1:24:38
  and we all have brains, and we may have nervous systems that are set here if
• 1:24:42
  you're an Arab, and set here if you're a draft horse, but nonetheless, you can
• 1:24:47
  still work with this neurochemistry.
• 1:24:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Why then, is this neurochemistry not taught?
• 1:24:57
  in most therapeutic, training modalities.
• 1:25:02
  And why is it not a part of, horse training?
• 1:25:07
  because when I say part of horse training, I mean, for example,
• 1:25:10
  I'm sitting here in Germany.
• 1:25:12
  And, so things are quite regulated here.
• 1:25:17
  You can't just, for example, show up and say, I'm a dressage trainer or I'm
• 1:25:20
  a, yeah, you'd have to set show what your training was, what you did, and
• 1:25:25
  it's all regulated by something called the FN, the Federation Nationale,
• 1:25:30
  governs a little bit like the U.
• 1:25:32
  S.
• 1:25:32
  Equestrian Federation, but more German.
• 1:25:34
  it has a whole system of teaching.
• 1:25:39
  No brain science for horse or rider.
• 1:25:42
  the British horse society, the same thing, the USCF, the same thing.
• 1:25:45
  and that's before you go into, getting trained to be a therapeutic writing
• 1:25:49
  instructor or something like that, where we began this conversation that you're
• 1:25:56
  trying to reach a fellow human being.
• 1:25:58
  Well, that's the brain you're trying to reach a horse.
• 1:26:01
  Well, that's the brain.
• 1:26:03
  Yet this, all these things that we've covered in the last hour,
• 1:26:08
  they're not part of any mainstream.
• 1:26:12
  training thing, equine or equine assisted or sport equine that I have come
• 1:26:19
  across, let alone teaching in schools.
• 1:26:20
  Why is that?
• 1:26:23
  Dr. Steven Peters: Well, I think there's a lot of reasons.
• 1:26:25
  One is it creates a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance.
• 1:26:29
  If somebody's identity Is tied to a method of training and we've been rigid
• 1:26:36
  and it passed down and, and you can't go outside this, this method of training
• 1:26:40
  because then you're in the enemy camp.
• 1:26:44
  So we've almost built these, these rigid camps and you get ostracized
• 1:26:48
  by your, your social group if you're now in another way of thinking.
• 1:26:54
  But if, if my whole social identity is in the 20 years that
• 1:26:58
  I've been brought up in a system.
• 1:27:00
  Right.
• 1:27:01
  And then I have to rethink that and let go of that.
• 1:27:05
  It's much easier to say, that's a bunch of baloney, or that's too complicated.
• 1:27:11
  So that's one piece of it.
• 1:27:13
  Now, dopamine happens to be one neurochemical that people look at,
• 1:27:18
  because dopamine underlies It's every study that that's linked to learning.
• 1:27:23
  You have to be motivated to learn and you set things up so you'll be motivated to
• 1:27:28
  learn positive reinforcement, etc, etc.
• 1:27:32
  But why are all the other neuro chemicals left left out of this.
• 1:27:42
  University veterinary programs about this.
• 1:27:45
  They said, yeah, you know, I said, I'm reading research, you know, that shows,
• 1:27:50
  you know, that the same neurochemistry is working in humans that works in horses.
• 1:27:56
  They've got all the same stuff here.
• 1:27:59
  And they said, well, that's just too complicated for the lay public.
• 1:28:02
  You know, that's just.
• 1:28:03
  That's, that's out there.
• 1:28:05
  In fact, when I went to Scotland and I, I, I gave presentations to large
• 1:28:14
  veterinary groups, They get very little of that part of things in their schooling.
• 1:28:20
  This was all new stuff to them, even in the equine medical world.
• 1:28:26
  and basically it's been my mission to try to, to translate this into
• 1:28:32
  lay terms and trying to find.
• 1:28:36
  Concepts and, and, examples that are understandable to the lay person, because,
• 1:28:43
  I, I think this is, important stuff and you see it in the medical field.
• 1:28:49
  Let me give you an example, you know, with autism, you, you end up with
• 1:28:54
  a protocol that's in place, right?
• 1:28:56
  And we've always followed this protocol.
• 1:28:58
  And so, you know, your, your child is going to be sent to, let's say speech
• 1:29:03
  therapy and physical therapy, and that's.
• 1:29:05
  That's the way that this, the prescription is written.
• 1:29:09
  And so everybody gets on the same page with that, and
• 1:29:12
  they've done it for 10 years.
• 1:29:13
  So that must be the way that we, we, we do this.
• 1:29:18
  And so, you know, it's easy to dismiss.
• 1:29:21
  You get cognitive dissonance and you dismiss this as out of the
• 1:29:24
  box or way out there, wacky stuff.
• 1:29:27
  Cognitive
• 1:29:28
  Rupert Isaacson: dissonance in layman's terms means...
• 1:29:30
  I don't quite get it, so I'm going to dismiss it.
• 1:29:33
  Right.
• 1:29:33
  Dr. Steven Peters: Or, you know, it's threatening to the
• 1:29:36
  beliefs that I hold currently.
• 1:29:38
  And I've got to change my worldview if I'm going to accept that.
• 1:29:41
  That's too hard for me to do.
• 1:29:43
  They don't do that consciously.
• 1:29:45
  That's too hard for me to do, so I'm going to stay right here with what I got.
• 1:29:49
  And, you know, there's nothing more rigid and traditional than
• 1:29:55
  horse training and horse camps.
• 1:30:01
  Rupert Isaacson: It's, it's an interesting thing
• 1:30:03
  that, that now we're in a.
• 1:30:06
  A moment in history where the horse is once again, changing its role
• 1:30:15
  with humans, at least in the West.
• 1:30:18
  so it's gone from transport to livestock, to war, to, entertainment, to sport.
• 1:30:28
  And now it's coming into therapy.
• 1:30:30
  And it's not that it's completely lost those other functions either.
• 1:30:33
  They're still there.
• 1:30:34
  However, where people were saying maybe 10 or 20 years ago, we used to hear a
• 1:30:40
  lot of people saying, Oh, the horse has now become irrelevant to modern life.
• 1:30:45
  It's just purely, a recreational thing.
• 1:30:49
  And now I think that that shifted again and the vast, development
• 1:30:55
  of the equine assisted.
• 1:30:57
  universe, because it's not just special needs anymore.
• 1:31:00
  It's, it's, it's anxiety.
• 1:31:02
  It's people just wanting to understand it's team building.
• 1:31:04
  It's people wanting to understand human interaction and metaphors.
• 1:31:07
  And whether you get into, should we anthropomorphize that or not is
• 1:31:10
  almost an irrelevant thing because we can only anthropomorphize because
• 1:31:14
  it's the only lens through which we can view, and presumably that will
• 1:31:17
  get more and more developed and more and more nuanced, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:31:22
  But nonetheless, the horse is right there in this professional role with us again.
• 1:31:27
  In a new way, and it seems that the neuroscience is at the
• 1:31:33
  absolute, foundation of this.
• 1:31:38
  Why it works, people might not know why it works, but as soon as the
• 1:31:41
  neuroscience is explained, they're like, oh yes, I see, okay, that makes sense.
• 1:31:45
  Yet it's not, the neuroscience is not in the training protocols yet.
• 1:31:50
  for, as you say, not for veterinary, not for sport, and interestingly, not
• 1:31:58
  much for The, the, the therapeutic end we, we at Horsepoy and Movement
• 1:32:03
  Method only have it in because we got curious about why it was working.
• 1:32:09
  And then we went and talked to a number of neuroscientists and we basically
• 1:32:13
  got the same answer from them all.
• 1:32:14
  So it allowed us to come up with a diagram that we could go back to them
• 1:32:17
  and say, are you basically saying that You've got this overdeveloped amygdala.
• 1:32:21
  You've got too much cortisol.
• 1:32:22
  You've got this overdeveloped nervous system.
• 1:32:24
  They're firing off each other.
• 1:32:26
  You're getting into a vicious cycle with this.
• 1:32:27
  And now we can come along with some hip rocking and some oxytocin, and
• 1:32:30
  this is calming the nervous system and, also create, switching off
• 1:32:34
  the amygdala, but also creating BDNF because they're balancing.
• 1:32:37
  And therefore we get to the prefrontal cortex and therefore,
• 1:32:40
  and they kind of looked at it.
• 1:32:41
  There were several kind of went, well, yeah, kind of.
• 1:32:43
  And we said, okay, well, this is very helpful for us because now and what we
• 1:32:48
  found is that in no way Has the layman had any trouble understanding this?
• 1:32:55
  Okay, some some of the terms Like I keep mispronouncing Neuropenephrine.
• 1:33:02
  Neuropenephrine and, I say...
• 1:33:05
  Acetylcholine.
• 1:33:05
  Acetylcholine.
• 1:33:06
  Okay.
• 1:33:07
  And it will take me some, some, some repetitions of that, but
• 1:33:09
  things like oxytocin and things like BDNF are relatively easy to
• 1:33:13
  stay or Purkinje cells or some of the other stuff that we get into.
• 1:33:17
  And of course, a lot of this is just simply, about...
• 1:33:19
  Get practicing and getting familiar, and we do know that scientists love
• 1:33:23
  their jargon and they love to come up with Multi syllable complicated words
• 1:33:27
  that are just frankly difficult to remember because a neuroscientist would
• 1:33:31
  have as much difficulty remembering Something in another language in several
• 1:33:35
  syllables as as this it just happens to be their field however I do think
• 1:33:41
  that most people are really up for it.
• 1:33:42
  I think that most people are open to it.
• 1:33:45
  I think there's a real hunger for it.
• 1:33:48
  So you say that you're not to mention a need for it.
• 1:33:52
  You you're going and you're giving, you mentioned coming back from
• 1:33:55
  Scotland and talking to groups of, of, veterinary students there.
• 1:33:59
  and so, so you're clearly going out and about turning
• 1:34:04
  people onto this neuroscience.
• 1:34:06
  What, what's your, what's your basic.
• 1:34:11
  A, B, C that you go into your average lay audience with.
• 1:34:18
  And say these, this is the boom, boom, boom that you need to understand
• 1:34:23
  to make your shit go better.
• 1:34:25
  Hit us.
• 1:34:26
  What is it?
• 1:34:27
  Dr. Steven Peters: Well, basically what I'll do is I'll take images
• 1:34:31
  because images are better than jargon, you know, and I'd stay away from the
• 1:34:35
  big words and, and if they're going to run across them in the literature and
• 1:34:40
  they want to search for them, like on Google Scholar or Science Direct, you
• 1:34:44
  know, I tell them where to go to also.
• 1:34:46
  , get information because, you know, the, there's so much pseudoscience
• 1:34:51
  out there in social media that they can get really pulled off.
• 1:34:56
  Basically, what I'll do is, is.
• 1:34:59
  We look at horses in certain different states.
• 1:35:03
  So, a horse that's in a parasympathetic mode, a horse that's alert with some
• 1:35:08
  acetylcholine aboard, a horse that now has too much norepinephrine,
• 1:35:12
  and they're looking for fight or flight, a horse that's been totally
• 1:35:16
  restrained, taken away fight or flight that's now gone into freeze.
• 1:35:20
  which is a different response than just being parked and comfortable.
• 1:35:25
  And we talk about what's going on in those horses brains.
• 1:35:28
  How did they get there?
• 1:35:31
  And then how can you create an environment that you'll recognize these
• 1:35:35
  things and, and set up environments where your horse can get there.
• 1:35:39
  And so what people leave is being able to better connect with their horses, have
• 1:35:44
  a better understanding and language of what's going on in their horse's brain.
• 1:35:49
  And this is most empowering.
• 1:35:50
  What I tell them is that you are going to be responsible for the
• 1:35:54
  amount of dendrites and neuronal connections in your horse's brain.
• 1:35:59
  You can create a special forces horse that's filled with dendrites and super
• 1:36:03
  smart, or you can pair them all down and just get a robotic kind of horse.
• 1:36:09
  That you're not connected with, but you are, regardless of what you
• 1:36:14
  do, you're responsible for creating that brain because that horse lives
• 1:36:17
  with you and interacts with you.
• 1:36:21
  And I think just that message alone, is, is one they take home.
• 1:36:25
  And I tell them, don't believe me.
• 1:36:27
  Just ask your horse.
• 1:36:28
  Just go out and experiment because everybody's a scientist.
• 1:36:32
  You don't have to have a big name.
• 1:36:35
  Everything is data.
• 1:36:36
  Everything is experience and information.
• 1:36:38
  Go out there and try things with your horse and, and, and work with your horse.
• 1:36:43
  Your horse is an individual as well with its own makeup.
• 1:36:49
  and that's kind of the package I put
• 1:36:51
  Rupert Isaacson: together.
• 1:36:53
  So basically you're saying go create dendrites and axons.
• 1:36:59
  Yes, axons meetings of dendrites
• 1:37:04
  Dr. Steven Peters: in axon is the long nerve ending, but at the end of
• 1:37:08
  that we'll branch out all these, these
• 1:37:11
  Rupert Isaacson: dendrites.
• 1:37:12
  Okay.
• 1:37:12
  So the axon is the main branch, the dendrite, the dendrites of the chest.
• 1:37:16
  Okay.
• 1:37:16
  Got it.
• 1:37:17
  And so
• 1:37:17
  Dr. Steven Peters: if a message comes in, it might come in
• 1:37:19
  through the dendrite into the
• 1:37:22
  Rupert Isaacson: axon and pass on its way.
• 1:37:23
  And then the axon, the axon will then take it further into the,
• 1:37:27
  the nervous system that's Right.
• 1:37:30
  Bagel nerve.
• 1:37:30
  And.
• 1:37:31
  Those things.
• 1:37:31
  Okay.
• 1:37:32
  So go create a bunch of, of, of dendrites and axons, create
• 1:37:37
  this forest of functional brain.
• 1:37:41
  behavior in your self, in your horse, in your child, in your person that
• 1:37:47
  you're working with by doing a bunch of cool shit in a non stressful way.
• 1:37:52
  I'll give you a
• 1:37:53
  Dr. Steven Peters: real quick example.
• 1:37:55
  Let's say you have a horse that rears because somebody's restrained them, taken
• 1:37:59
  away fight or flight, sort of whipped at them and all they're left with was Yeah.
• 1:38:04
  So then somebody else inherits this horse and says, that's a bad
• 1:38:06
  horse that will get you killed.
• 1:38:08
  Let's put this horse down.
• 1:38:09
  Or you could approach it as this horse has been so overwhelmed with
• 1:38:13
  norepinephrine that what I have to do is one, make them feel safe, first of all.
• 1:38:19
  So I have to go back because the horse is now a victim of that neuronal connection.
• 1:38:25
  It's now in place.
• 1:38:26
  They can't help it.
• 1:38:27
  That's what the norepinephrine is just going to send information
• 1:38:30
  down that pathway to survive.
• 1:38:32
  What I have to do is show that horse, it doesn't need to go take that
• 1:38:35
  pathway by creating good pathways.
• 1:38:38
  So they're getting more and more serotonin and balancing out.
• 1:38:42
  Once I get it to a certain level, then I can start to say, okay,
• 1:38:46
  now let's go get some dopamine.
• 1:38:48
  You're at a place where you can finally start to, to get some dopamine.
• 1:38:52
  And then they get really, they learn to learn and they're looking
• 1:38:56
  for every opportunity to learn.
• 1:38:58
  Now I've got a horse that I'm out riding with.
• 1:39:00
  It's comfortable, calm, and looking at new things as opportunity.
• 1:39:06
  And that would have been a horse I would have put down if I just left them with
• 1:39:10
  that old connected network in that.
• 1:39:15
  And people who see that get scared.
• 1:39:17
  So then they feel like they have to provide some kind of punishment
• 1:39:21
  and you're really just reinforcing creating more white matter on
• 1:39:25
  that dysfunctional pathway.
• 1:39:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 1:39:30
  Um, so, okay, so Let's go again.
• 1:39:33
  So let's take a, let's take our human or our horse, that human, us, that human
• 1:39:39
  could be the person that we're working with if we're in an equine assistive
• 1:39:42
  context, the person, or it could be our riding student and it can certainly
• 1:39:46
  be our horse because all of us who are going out into this environment
• 1:39:50
  together are taking a nervous system and a brain with us and let's create
• 1:39:55
  as many dendrites and axons as we can.
• 1:39:59
  And get those, hopefully those, those dendrites, those twigs to brush
• 1:40:02
  against each other to buy lots and lots of cool new stimuli, but let's
• 1:40:07
  be careful to do enough norepiprofen to get things stimulated, but not
• 1:40:14
  so much that we overstimulate.
• 1:40:17
  So let's do a bunch of pausing and let's use, some serotonin oxytocin
• 1:40:23
  things like having their friends along.
• 1:40:26
  Or older horses that can make them feel safe or empathetic touch or many of
• 1:40:32
  these that will create these chemicals and then we can, when they're, when
• 1:40:37
  they have learned something or are clearly learning something, let's
• 1:40:41
  pause and go away and sleep on it with our, with our dear friend,
• 1:40:50
  as say to colon.
• 1:40:51
  so that in the course of that pause.
• 1:40:56
  long or short, those neural pathways can be established in, in the positive way.
• 1:41:02
  the BDNF, the brain derived neurotrophic factor can kick in, in a way that
• 1:41:06
  is lasting, not just in the moment.
• 1:41:08
  And we are in a positive progression.
• 1:41:11
  Is that.
• 1:41:12
  More or less, sir,
• 1:41:14
  Dr. Steven Peters: in a nutshell, that is, you hit the nail on the head.
• 1:41:17
  Rupert Isaacson: So if I were to come along, if I was to, from this
• 1:41:21
  conversation, produce a little diagram of that, I think I'm going to, I'm going to
• 1:41:25
  try and I'm going to bring it back to you.
• 1:41:27
  And then you'll tell me if I've got it right or wrong.
• 1:41:29
  I have to tweak it and then we'll tweak it.
• 1:41:32
  I think that would be a useful thing.
• 1:41:34
  For me as a guideline to then also when I'm working with my students
• 1:41:40
  and when I'm working with my whoever I'm working with to point to that
• 1:41:46
  diagram and say, well, look, Dr.
• 1:41:47
  Steve takes us through this.
• 1:41:49
  if we could be mindful of this process, we're respecting the brain science.
• 1:41:54
  And if you forget how to pronounce norepiprofen and acetylcholine, it's
• 1:42:00
  all right, because you just know what to do in order to get them.
• 1:42:03
  You know, this is, this is exactly the kind of information that I'm always
• 1:42:07
  looking for, because I think, you know, when, what, the thing that mystified me
• 1:42:16
  when I went to see the neuroscientist To get the explanations about why
• 1:42:20
  what we were doing was working was I was like, well, why are you, why do
• 1:42:24
  I have to come and fucking find you and hunt you down like a wild coyote?
• 1:42:29
  Why isn't this information sort of out there?
• 1:42:32
  And they sort of say, well, honestly, rude people aren't interested.
• 1:42:36
  we're here doing our neuroscience stuff and we publish our stuff,
• 1:42:38
  but I'll give you an example.
• 1:42:41
  at the University of Texas, you know, . Where we worked a bit with the autism
• 1:42:45
  lab and in the beginning bit with my son, because my ex wife was a professor there.
• 1:42:49
  and then we just ran straight into a kind of nightmare of behaviorism.
• 1:42:54
  The, the, the neuroscientists were just a couple of meters away, and they had
• 1:43:02
  all the information that would have made that behavioral approach better.
• 1:43:06
  Yet those people were not talking to each other, just on a human Based
• 1:43:10
  on that set of academics, we're not talking to that set of academics.
• 1:43:13
  And that's where it became sort of siloed.
• 1:43:17
  And then one has to go out and actually seek the knowledge.
• 1:43:21
  Even though it's hiding in plain sight, but you're there coming along
• 1:43:25
  and letting us know, is this, is this the basic one, two, three that
• 1:43:30
  you're taking people through, whether it's vet schools or horse training or?
• 1:43:35
  Dr. Steven Peters: Yeah.
• 1:43:36
  And no matter what program you have, no matter what discipline
• 1:43:42
  you have, you know, you could say this is the right way to do it.
• 1:43:45
  A, B and C and D.
• 1:43:46
  You can come up with any program you want positive reinforcement,
• 1:43:50
  negative reinforcement, whatever you use clicker training, et cetera.
• 1:43:56
  The brain is going to process it in the brain's terms.
• 1:44:00
  So, no matter what program you have, understanding how the brain
• 1:44:04
  processes it, because the brain doesn't care what program you have,
• 1:44:09
  it wants to be able to best process.
• 1:44:13
  So setting up the environment that best allows brains to do that, and
• 1:44:18
  oftentimes in this busy world, merely slowing down enough to assimilate
• 1:44:25
  information gets you farther down the road than if you tried to force
• 1:44:30
  things to happen when the brain doesn't actually want to take it in that way.
• 1:44:37
  Rupert Isaacson: So I'm just writing my little diagram here.
• 1:44:41
  Okay.
• 1:44:42
  Yes.
• 1:44:43
  So we, we know that we don't need, if anything is overwhelmed,
• 1:44:52
  then it's going to be a disaster.
• 1:44:55
  This seems to be the, the neuroscience of horse sense, the
• 1:44:59
  neuroscience of common sense.
• 1:45:01
  , what I like about it too, is it gets away from just the
• 1:45:04
  pure, , pleasure hormones thing.
• 1:45:07
  Dopamine, serotonin, , endorphins, oxytocin, that we know we need all those.
• 1:45:13
  However, they're not the whole picture.
• 1:45:15
  We need, they need to be dosed in certain ways.
• 1:45:17
  And it seems like what you've told us here with the dendrites and axons
• 1:45:21
  to the norepiprofen to the pausing to the, acetyl, acetylcholine gives us a
• 1:45:29
  way of, as you say, being a bartender, of being able to deliver those good
• 1:45:34
  things in a way that's appropriate.
• 1:45:37
  For the situation, the context, the animal or the human that's in front
• 1:45:40
  of us or oneself in this particular moment, this is massively useful.
• 1:45:45
  How are people, how can people come on your courses?
• 1:45:48
  Tell us about this.
• 1:45:49
  How can they find you and how can they sign up to learn?
• 1:45:55
  Dr. Steven Peters: Sure.
• 1:45:55
  they can go to my website, horsebrainscience.
• 1:46:00
  info And there'll be, a schedule of, of classes that I, I give.
• 1:46:07
  I also, do a course called Equiscience.
• 1:46:12
  That's sort of the horse human relationship with, a
• 1:46:14
  psychotherapist, Sarah Schlotty.
• 1:46:18
  Oh yes,
• 1:46:19
  Rupert Isaacson: she's very good.
• 1:46:20
  Dr. Steven Peters: Yeah, and people can find that at Equiscience.
• 1:46:25
  Rupert Isaacson: com.
• 1:46:27
  Equiscience.
• 1:46:28
  com, all one word, yeah.
• 1:46:31
  Dr. Steven Peters: And you can be really hopeful about this because People
• 1:46:35
  told me when I first started to talk about this that, that it was above and
• 1:46:40
  too complicated for the lay person.
• 1:46:43
  And what I found is exactly what you told me.
• 1:46:45
  People are hungry for this information.
• 1:46:48
  And I, my schedule is so busy that I'm traveling everywhere
• 1:46:53
  giving these, these presentations.
• 1:46:56
  So I think that indeed we are, we're in the midst of a paradigm shift.
• 1:47:02
  and, and a lot of these old rigid programs will have to change just
• 1:47:07
  because of the outcomes and what you see, in the better results.
• 1:47:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Are you, are you writing a, like a neuroscience for dummies book?
• 1:47:16
  Is there something that's specific to the layman where this stuff, we can find this
• 1:47:21
  stuff and assimilate it in an easy way?
• 1:47:26
  Dr. Steven Peters: In my presentations, that's pretty much what I try to do.
• 1:47:29
  I haven't, I've thought of rewriting a book.
• 1:47:33
  but you know, people have gotten away from, from reading, unfortunately,
• 1:47:38
  you know, it's a fast paced world.
• 1:47:40
  They want it on their phone.
• 1:47:41
  They want it in, in, in sound bites.
• 1:47:45
  And so I've had to find a different media to get the message across
• 1:47:49
  because I think I almost limit myself by, by writing a book.
• 1:47:54
  Yeah,
• 1:47:54
  Rupert Isaacson: I think there's something in that or, or, or
• 1:47:58
  these days it gets more complex.
• 1:47:59
  One has to do all of it, right?
• 1:48:01
  You've got to write the book, you've got to do the podcast, you've got
• 1:48:02
  to do the website, you've got to do the, the app, you've got to do that.
• 1:48:06
  what, what I would be really interested in looking at is, so we are, we are now,
• 1:48:11
  for example, in Ireland with Horseboy.
• 1:48:14
  and movement methods sort of now going into the mainstream where we're getting
• 1:48:18
  government funding to bring this stuff in because they're just finding that
• 1:48:22
  the outcomes are, good enough that it's, it's, it's saving the money.
• 1:48:27
  it means that, for example, six foot four blokes with autism who act out
• 1:48:32
  violently and need three minders, each of which costs the government a hundred
• 1:48:37
  thousand a year get reduced to one.
• 1:48:40
  you know, and they see that number and go, okay, well, we'll put, and as we
• 1:48:45
  train more and more people, you know, we do our little neuroscience bit, but I'm
• 1:48:49
  always thinking that, but there's more, there's more, there's more, it would
• 1:48:53
  be very good if we could bring you in.
• 1:48:57
  but it needs to go beyond that.
• 1:48:58
  I'm thinking also the curatorium for therapeutic writing in Germany.
• 1:49:02
  , they're, they're very open.
• 1:49:04
  and we should go.
• 1:49:08
  Present this to as many of these bodies as we can without trying to
• 1:49:13
  sell them anything with the sort of a basically take it or leave it.
• 1:49:16
  This will make it better.
• 1:49:20
  Don't take our word for it.
• 1:49:21
  But if you feel like going for it, here it is in whatever form, because I
• 1:49:27
  think this is some of the most valuable information I've I've heard in years.
• 1:49:30
  and to the point where I always know when something is really useful, when
• 1:49:33
  I can draw a little diagram based on what an expert is saying, that means
• 1:49:38
  they're getting it across, right?
• 1:49:41
  You're not just going, Oh, what was that word that they said?
• 1:49:42
  What was that thing?
• 1:49:43
  Your clarity of delivery is unusual.
• 1:49:47
  Which means it's helpful, unusually helpful.
• 1:49:50
  where do you want, where do you want it to all go in the next five to 10 years?
• 1:49:57
  You're looking at the equine industry.
• 1:50:00
  You're looking at vets, but you're also looking at mental health.
• 1:50:03
  You yourself have autism.
• 1:50:05
  you're looking at all these kids who are coming into the system.
• 1:50:08
  Where do you want, how do you want this neuroscience to.
• 1:50:11
  Get a
• 1:50:11
  Dr. Steven Peters: simulator.
• 1:50:12
  No, I don't want to sort of practicing outside of my scope because I don't
• 1:50:18
  think that that's just opinion and not really based on the evidence
• 1:50:22
  based information that I know well.
• 1:50:25
  So, with humans, most of my, my background was in the dementias and and, you
• 1:50:33
  know, deteriorating brain process, etc.
• 1:50:37
  So I don't have a clinical background.
• 1:50:39
  In autism, other than just being on the spectrum myself.
• 1:50:44
  So that's the only, in, knowledge base I have in terms of.
• 1:50:50
  of therapies.
• 1:50:51
  Rupert Isaacson: you've got to understand how funny that sounds because basically
• 1:50:53
  what you just said is I've got no, I've got no clinical, knowledge of autism,
• 1:50:57
  and neuroscience other than the fact that I'm an autistic neuroscientist.
• 1:51:02
  Dr. Steven Peters: It sounds ridiculous, but you know, when you get up in front
• 1:51:05
  of a panel and they say, how many books have you written on autism, you know, is
• 1:51:10
  though that were the, were the measure.
• 1:51:14
  so I think I, I'm able to make the biggest input, you know, I would like to see when
• 1:51:20
  somebody rides a rodeo horse, for example.
• 1:51:25
  That that horse can come calmly into an arena and then.
• 1:51:30
  No, in through the communication.
• 1:51:32
  I just dial up my nervous system, but I'm still feeling safe.
• 1:51:36
  I'm still hunting for that dopamine.
• 1:51:39
  I run my pattern.
• 1:51:40
  I'm finished.
• 1:51:41
  The writer gets off.
• 1:51:44
  I look and chew.
• 1:51:45
  Then I walk onto the trailer and I go home.
• 1:51:48
  That can happen.
• 1:51:50
  You don't have to yank the horse's mouth around.
• 1:51:54
  You don't have to spur the horse.
• 1:51:55
  In fact, most of the time that horse is more worried about when
• 1:51:58
  the hammer is going to fall.
• 1:52:00
  Okay.
• 1:52:00
  Okay.
• 1:52:00
  than they are about concentrating on what they need to do.
• 1:52:04
  And so I think our abuse of horses, and I call it abuse, has become normalized
• 1:52:13
  just because we see it so often.
• 1:52:16
  And I'd like us to have a different lens.
• 1:52:19
  One that's more, gives the horse a better deal.
• 1:52:23
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, and I'd say that that brutalization of humans
• 1:52:29
  was normalized for the same reason.
• 1:52:31
  It was just...
• 1:52:32
  One saw it every day, you know, the school system I went through, we were beaten.
• 1:52:36
  We just were.
• 1:52:38
  things are getting better.
• 1:52:39
  That's now illegal.
• 1:52:40
  but the harshness behind it, the impatience, the what the Pink Floyd
• 1:52:46
  would call the dark sarcasm in the classroom, all the stuff that
• 1:52:49
  activates your amygdala anyway.
• 1:52:52
  these things happen.
• 1:52:52
  These things change only slowly unless someone like a Dr.
• 1:52:56
  Steve comes along and says, well, actually, here's the neuroscience of it.
• 1:52:59
  So.
• 1:53:00
  it's not a culture thing.
• 1:53:01
  It's not, are you kind or not kind?
• 1:53:03
  It's just, this is how the brain works.
• 1:53:05
  If you do it like this, it will happen like that.
• 1:53:07
  If you do it like this, it will happen like that.
• 1:53:09
  so you say you don't want to be outside of your area, but I think
• 1:53:12
  that anyone who's listening to this right now, let's say they're coming
• 1:53:16
  from a therapeutic writing context, will find everything that you said
• 1:53:19
  massively helpful and take those tools.
• 1:53:24
  and add them to their toolbox.
• 1:53:27
  so I don't think you need to worry about because it's not, we're not
• 1:53:34
  talking about an academic world here.
• 1:53:36
  it's more the world of the practitioners.
• 1:53:38
  I think the world of the practitioners, the people who want
• 1:53:42
  to get the job done, want to get the
• 1:53:44
  Dr. Steven Peters: job done.
• 1:53:47
  Well, what I do love about my job is that.
• 1:53:52
  You know, it's, it's evidence based information.
• 1:53:55
  So, you know, it's not my opinion.
• 1:53:58
  So people could dismiss that.
• 1:54:00
  Well, that's Steve Peter's opinion.
• 1:54:02
  But if I say the heart pumps blood and somebody goes, well,
• 1:54:06
  that's just your opinion.
• 1:54:07
  I can say, well, no, actually, that's a fact.
• 1:54:10
  And this is how it's supported.
• 1:54:11
  And this is how, how we know that indeed that is a fact.
• 1:54:15
  And that's not my opinion.
• 1:54:17
  And so, yeah, my knowledge of brain functioning over 3 decades of working.
• 1:54:24
  with, with brains, , does put me in a place where I can say, no, that
• 1:54:29
  this is, this is evidence based.
• 1:54:32
  , and it's always a position of strength because I try not to go into realms
• 1:54:37
  where I'm relying on, on my opinion.
• 1:54:42
  I'm, I'm really relying on, on
• 1:54:44
  Rupert Isaacson: fact.
• 1:54:46
  Okay.
• 1:54:46
  So we're approaching the two hour mark here.
• 1:54:50
  And I think what this is, what's really good about this is that.
• 1:54:58
  Let's say I was listening to this and I and I was Making some notes.
• 1:55:02
  Okay.
• 1:55:02
  Dendrites.
• 1:55:02
  Axons.
• 1:55:04
  Okay.
• 1:55:04
  Go there.
• 1:55:05
  Activities.
• 1:55:05
  Let's get that.
• 1:55:07
  Noreen.
• 1:55:08
  Too much.
• 1:55:08
  Not good.
• 1:55:09
  Okay, so just enough for the beta.
• 1:55:12
  That's good.
• 1:55:13
  Then the pause and then the aesthetic, , coline so that we can sleep on it and get
• 1:55:20
  those neural pathways going in a good way.
• 1:55:22
  This is really helpful.
• 1:55:24
  What else do we really need to know as a kind of a neuroscience bottom line?
• 1:55:31
  About horse brain human brain.
• 1:55:35
  You need us to go away with that.
• 1:55:39
  We shouldn't Get off this chair
• 1:55:42
  Dr. Steven Peters: without knowing what I would tell your listeners for the
• 1:55:47
  horse and the human is that your brain is constantly rewiring and wiring itself.
• 1:55:56
  And so if you looked at it as though you're a neurological gardener.
• 1:56:02
  And you have to create the environment to grow the biggest
• 1:56:06
  dendritic forest that you can grow.
• 1:56:09
  And you only do that by understanding the environment and understanding how to
• 1:56:12
  create a fertile ground in which that can occur for both the human and the horse.
• 1:56:19
  And that may be different for each human.
• 1:56:21
  They may need different nutrients.
• 1:56:22
  They may be different attention, et cetera, to produce that dendritic field.
• 1:56:27
  But we're all capable of wiring our brains.
• 1:56:31
  our horse and us.
• 1:56:33
  And so providing that and looking at yourself as the neuronal gardener.
• 1:56:41
  And if you are the
• 1:56:42
  Rupert Isaacson: neuronal gardener and, or forester, and you're creating this,
• 1:56:47
  this forest in the horse, in yourself, in your client, it sounds like the
• 1:56:52
  creation of this dendritic forest or garden comes down in many ways to play,
• 1:56:58
  Dr. Steven Peters: or am I wrong?
• 1:57:01
  That's a perfect environment because then you're able to tolerate so
• 1:57:06
  much more in a safe environment.
• 1:57:09
  Yeah.
• 1:57:09
  And, and the result of play is huge dopamine hits and curiosity.
• 1:57:15
  And, yeah, it's, it's a safe environment and movement is often involved.
• 1:57:21
  So that's a very creative way of, of creating this, this new
• 1:57:29
  dendritic force animals that aren't safe enough to play that aren't
• 1:57:33
  comfortable in their environments that are isolated in isolation.
• 1:57:39
  is the second biggest stressor for horses.
• 1:57:41
  Restraint is one, isolation is another.
• 1:57:44
  They need contact.
• 1:57:46
  Nervous systems need other nervous systems to thrive.
• 1:57:50
  That's what, so
• 1:57:51
  Rupert Isaacson: they're much later, right?
• 1:57:52
  Co regulation is that?
• 1:57:54
  Dr. Steven Peters: Yeah.
• 1:57:55
  Yeah.
• 1:57:57
  But more than that, I mean, you're, you're, you're oxytocin deprived
• 1:58:02
  if you don't have interaction in touch with other animals.
• 1:58:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:58:08
  So, so one of the things which, . I often do when I'm going
• 1:58:12
  around doing dressage clinics.
• 1:58:14
  that's one of my other lives, right?
• 1:58:16
  Is, I've learned now that when the horse comes in to the arena snorting and
• 1:58:23
  fire breathing dragon y and basically they've just got off the trailer in this
• 1:58:26
  new place and they're all freaked out.
• 1:58:29
  what I've started to do now is say, actually chaps, let's just pull
• 1:58:32
  the saddle off and let him play.
• 1:58:35
  Let's let him play.
• 1:58:36
  If you feel that he can play safely with another horse, let's
• 1:58:39
  have him play with another horse.
• 1:58:41
  if you brought another horse with you, for example, and they know each other,
• 1:58:44
  if not, let's interact with the horse and we'll know when that horse is
• 1:58:50
  ready to receive information from us.
• 1:58:52
  But if we don't give him a bit of crazy time and a bit of fun, and then a bit of
• 1:58:56
  exploration time, frankly, they're just not going to take in any information.
• 1:59:00
  It's just not worth it.
• 1:59:01
  And I took the, the, the, the leap of saying this to people who were, you
• 1:59:06
  know, proper, proper Grand Prix riders.
• 1:59:08
  And it, it made a massive difference.
• 1:59:11
  And what I realized was, you know, cause I went to a lot of, horse seminars
• 1:59:16
  and so on, I had a lot of people, particularly from the Western USA saying.
• 1:59:21
  Oh, well, you know, if you don't keep your horses in herds in big pastures, you're
• 1:59:25
  an arsehole and I was thinking yeah, but Unfortunately, that's just shaming
• 1:59:29
  people who have no option but to keep their horses in suburban, Riding clubs or
• 1:59:36
  boarding stables where they have no choice because they're being run by somebody
• 1:59:41
  else Who's doing it with the horses in boxes and blah blah blah blah blah.
• 1:59:45
  So they just go away feeling shit with no solution to their problems.
• 1:59:50
  So then I started thinking, okay, well, what's the solution?
• 1:59:52
  The solution is getting horses to play together in herds at the very least.
• 1:59:57
  So you open up the covered arena, do some free jumping, have them mill around,
• 2:00:01
  change the playground for them every couple of minutes, let them enjoy it.
• 2:00:05
  And we found that this really worked well in those environments.
• 2:00:08
  You had to integrate them.
• 2:00:10
  Obviously say, you know, they were safe with each other, but that it came so much
• 2:00:15
  down, as you say, to social time and play, but that one couldn't go and say to people
• 2:00:20
  are you can't control your environment.
• 2:00:23
  So therefore, and, and, and the option of having a ranch in Montana
• 2:00:27
  or Colorado is not there for you.
• 2:00:29
  Therefore, you shouldn't keep horses at all.
• 2:00:32
  That just makes people sad and depressed and, and doesn't
• 2:00:35
  give them practical solutions.
• 2:00:38
  But what's really nice is if, if, if then they want to create this...
• 2:00:43
  Social time and crazy time for their horses and they go to the barn owner
• 2:00:46
  and the barn owner says well No, I don't want to do that if they can produce the
• 2:00:50
  kind of neuroscience that you've just come up with and say well Actually,
• 2:00:53
  this makes it safer for everybody.
• 2:00:55
  This makes it safer for your people who are mucking out the boxes This
• 2:00:59
  makes it safer for you the barn owner because the horses have fewer accidents
• 2:01:03
  because they freak out less and they don't stand there kicking the walls
• 2:01:08
  or get their feet hung up and Rafters, because they're all freaked out and
• 2:01:13
  rearing up in the box and all the stuff that happens, , in those environments.
• 2:01:17
  It, it seems to always come down to the neuroscience.
• 2:01:20
  if, so if you say you're a gardener trying to, or a forester trying
• 2:01:25
  to create the biggest dendritic forest that you can, I love that.
• 2:01:31
  In the most fertile soil that you can.
• 2:01:35
  Okay, if the dendritic pathways are coming through this exploration and
• 2:01:38
  play, how are we creating that soil?
• 2:01:46
  How are we creating the soil for those dendrites to grow out
• 2:01:49
  Dr. Steven Peters: of?
• 2:01:53
  Well, in that condition that you talked about a stall, a box stall,
• 2:01:58
  even if it's made out of mahogany is a sensory deprivation box.
• 2:02:02
  And we know any mammal put in that type of environment, especially a herd animal,
• 2:02:08
  you're going to be pruning back dendrites.
• 2:02:10
  That brain is going to weigh less.
• 2:02:11
  In a brain that can interact with other horses, you could say, well,
• 2:02:15
  well, I can't do that because of, the confines of a small environment.
• 2:02:21
  I think in the future, because the research is so robust in this area that
• 2:02:26
  it's just not healthy psychologically and emotionally to be isolating
• 2:02:31
  horses and putting them in stalls.
• 2:02:34
  You know, all of those, those, the way that they cope with that with.
• 2:02:38
  You know, wind sucking and cribbing, et cetera, are the result of
• 2:02:42
  they lower their cortisol level.
• 2:02:45
  They're, they're not, , they don't have, it's not that they don't have any purpose.
• 2:02:49
  They have a good purpose and helping animals stay self regulated emotionally.
• 2:02:55
  But I think people are going to learn to landscape a little better,
• 2:02:59
  and they're going to find a track system, maybe even one acre of land.
• 2:03:04
  I've seen this in San Diego, small little outcropping with a little hillside.
• 2:03:10
  And then there's a track along the outside of the The property where hay is
• 2:03:16
  placed in certain areas and somebody's put down some P gravel for their hooves.
• 2:03:20
  Somebody else has created a little water hole that they can congregate at.
• 2:03:24
  And I would argue that getting when people say, well, my horse
• 2:03:29
  will get hurt with other horses.
• 2:03:31
  I would argue that that physical losing a little hide doesn't really
• 2:03:36
  weigh well with the psychological and emotional comfort that horses
• 2:03:41
  get in their, in their interaction.
• 2:03:43
  And in terms of brain growth, that soil needs to have some sort of.
• 2:03:50
  interaction, we all need interaction with each other.
• 2:03:53
  So we may have to be creative and how we do that.
• 2:03:57
  But just not addressing the issue and putting them in
• 2:04:02
  isolating them isn't an answer.
• 2:04:05
  Rupert Isaacson: So, so, so prioritizing it as a prioritizing that social
• 2:04:10
  time and saying Okay, because we need these dendrites, before we can
• 2:04:17
  think about anything at all, we've got to re jig our environment.
• 2:04:22
  So, If we are indeed in a, in a, in a, in a limited space, so the horses
• 2:04:29
  are, or you've just the barn owner, there you are, you've got a stable and
• 2:04:32
  there are stalls, and that's just the environment that you've either bought
• 2:04:35
  or inherited or whatever, there it is.
• 2:04:39
  Can we then say, all right, what do we do to optimize this?
• 2:04:45
  How can we give the horses the maximum opportunity to go and socialize?
• 2:04:51
  without it just feeling like a prison yard, right?
• 2:04:53
  so, so for example, if, if you put in those tracks that you're talking
• 2:04:57
  about and the horse goes back to the box, is that bet, is that better than
• 2:05:05
  if the horse doesn't get that at all?
• 2:05:07
  Or is it that we should, if possible, learn that
• 2:05:12
  Dr. Steven Peters: that's where they get that.
• 2:05:15
  Oftentimes, if they learn where they that's where they've gotten fed that
• 2:05:18
  that's where they don't have to work, they may gravitate back to that.
• 2:05:22
  But we learned this lesson in in zoos.
• 2:05:26
  When I was a child, we'd go to zoos and then small cages, small boxes, they'd have
• 2:05:31
  animals, they pace, they bite at things.
• 2:05:35
  they never thrived.
• 2:05:36
  And once zoos became enlightened and the closer they could replicate a natural
• 2:05:42
  habitat, natural environment for that animal, then they hit on the, and so then
• 2:05:48
  it became monorails that came over the zoo and look down on animals in a big field.
• 2:05:55
  And you may not have that much land.
• 2:05:58
  But I think it behooves us to be creative and understand the closer I
• 2:06:04
  can replicate a natural environment, the better my animals going to thrive.
• 2:06:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 2:06:11
  You know, I'm thinking, I mean,
• 2:06:12
  Dr. Steven Peters: those mustangs.
• 2:06:14
  Go ahead.
• 2:06:16
  I was just going to say, you know, sometimes we get egotistical that we
• 2:06:20
  have to teach the horse everything, you know, there are mustangs out in the
• 2:06:26
  wild that aren't just standing still saying, I hope some human comes along
• 2:06:29
  and teaches me to trot and teaches me how to find the waterhole, etc.
• 2:06:35
  You know, they're probably filled with.
• 2:06:37
  with dendrites because they have that, that environment and you
• 2:06:41
  know, they have good hoof health and et cetera, et cetera, on and on.
• 2:06:47
  So I'm not saying, you know, let your horses all run free, but I am
• 2:06:53
  saying that, that, , from a brain standpoint and brain health and from
• 2:06:58
  a wellness standpoint, I'm thinking about how can I create that fertile
• 2:07:04
  ground and that fertile ground being.
• 2:07:07
  As close to a natural habitat as I can get if they can forage, you
• 2:07:11
  know, that's much better than highly processed grains that just go right
• 2:07:15
  through them, filling them full of sugar and sticking them in a stall.
• 2:07:18
  It's not good for a human or a horse.
• 2:07:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 2:07:23
  And one of the things which is interesting in that the, the, the urban
• 2:07:29
  environment of horse keeping, where horses, of course, were in stores.
• 2:07:35
  one forgot was that the horse was outside working all day constantly moving,
• 2:07:40
  moving, moving, moving, moving, often in conjunction with a herd because they, they
• 2:07:46
  were groups of them doing things together.
• 2:07:47
  They might be being driven in a team.
• 2:07:49
  They might be, working in a cavalry regiment.
• 2:07:52
  They might be this, they might be that, but in general and all
• 2:07:54
  sorts of human contact, constant, constant, constant, constant.
• 2:07:57
  And then going back into a store after moving all day, just to
• 2:08:02
  kind of chill is very different.
• 2:08:04
  To standing in a box for 23 hours, waiting for your owner, who's got a
• 2:08:08
  job and a family to come and ride you for one hour in the arena, get upset
• 2:08:12
  that you can't concentrate and then put you back in that isolation box again.
• 2:08:17
  And, and.
• 2:08:18
  Cavalry, schools, you know, which again would always have the horses in
• 2:08:22
  the boxes until they went on campaign.
• 2:08:25
  And then of course, when they went on campaign, they were in the field.
• 2:08:29
  so I think what, what, what's happened is we've lost.
• 2:08:32
  the context of, of, of these things.
• 2:08:36
  and we, I see it almost less as a, as a problem of the way we keep
• 2:08:41
  horses as the way in which we're trying to make horses conform.
• 2:08:46
  To a modern paradigm of human life that horse human interaction wasn't
• 2:08:52
  really ever created for And then how but then I find it quite intriguing.
• 2:08:57
  How do we find solutions to that problem?
• 2:08:59
  For example group play in the covered arena?
• 2:09:05
  Yeah, but it's interesting I now do this as a as a as a prerequisite for
• 2:09:12
  any of my clients in the stable where we're based out of in Germany, because
• 2:09:17
  they are indeed in boxes, but they're actually out in the fields in the day.
• 2:09:21
  that's how it's done.
• 2:09:22
  So I say to all my people, get them playing together, playing
• 2:09:26
  together, playing together.
• 2:09:26
  And we set up, I set them up into groups and anyone who won't do this.
• 2:09:31
  I say, well, I can't really have you as a client because I just know that I'm going
• 2:09:35
  to be dealing with an unhappy horse that as soon as you're ready to integrate your
• 2:09:40
  horse into that herd for some playtime, some crazy time, come back and talk to me.
• 2:09:43
  I do understand that you have a job.
• 2:09:45
  I do understand that you have a baby.
• 2:09:46
  I do understand that you'll have time constraints.
• 2:09:51
  But as you say, let's replicate as closely as we can to the original.
• 2:09:59
  Dr. Steven Peters: I know exactly what you're saying.
• 2:10:01
  Martin Black and I, we do a colt starting every year in October, and
• 2:10:05
  we don't keep a horse in isolation.
• 2:10:07
  Four horses are started together.
• 2:10:12
  Yeah, and so that actually creates the sense of safety.
• 2:10:15
  There's movement together, et cetera.
• 2:10:18
  And, and it more than pays off.
• 2:10:21
  because you work with 1 and then you get a pause because you
• 2:10:23
  have to work with the others.
• 2:10:24
  So the.
• 2:10:25
  The pause is, is built into the whole process, and yet you can use the herd and
• 2:10:31
  all that serotonin and oxytocin in your favor, and it truly makes a difference.
• 2:10:37
  Yeah,
• 2:10:37
  Rupert Isaacson: plus the visual learning.
• 2:10:38
  I mean, they watch each other, right?
• 2:10:39
  They learn from each other.
• 2:10:41
  , so much of, , what's forgotten with horses, as you know,
• 2:10:44
  is, ... Where did, where did horse domestication and training start?
• 2:10:48
  Starts in Central Asia with who?
• 2:10:50
  With tribes.
• 2:10:51
  Well, what's a tribe.
• 2:10:52
  A tribe is a group of people out there living in tents, constantly interacting
• 2:10:57
  as clans and extended families.
• 2:10:59
  What are horses, herd animals, constantly interacting in clans and, and, and you
• 2:11:04
  put those two things together and you get.
• 2:11:07
  Equestrian culture.
• 2:11:10
  And then it's pretty functional.
• 2:11:12
  because it's, it's obeying the rules of the fact that we're both
• 2:11:16
  heard animals really effectively.
• 2:11:18
  and now suddenly with the cult of the individual, we've broken that.
• 2:11:23
  and we wonder why we're running into some problems.
• 2:11:27
  but when you come along and explain it, particularly in the, in the,
• 2:11:31
  even if we just bring the whole thing back to dendrites, Okay.
• 2:11:36
  And say, fewer dendrites, more problems for you and your horse.
• 2:11:41
  More dendrites.
• 2:11:43
  Better.
• 2:11:43
  Everything's going to go.
• 2:11:44
  Which one do you want shit or good?
• 2:11:47
  Then let's go for some dendrites.
• 2:11:49
  You know, that's
• 2:11:51
  Dr. Steven Peters: how we use your flowers.
• 2:11:52
  Yeah.
• 2:11:55
  you know, Rupert, I think you and I in conversation could probably
• 2:11:58
  spend an entire day bouncing these things back and forth.
• 2:12:02
  So maybe you'll invite me and we'll try this again.
• 2:12:06
  I would love
• 2:12:06
  Rupert Isaacson: to.
• 2:12:06
  And if you want more than that, what I'd like to do is I'm going to
• 2:12:10
  throw this open to the listeners.
• 2:12:11
  Okay.
• 2:12:11
  Listeners.
• 2:12:11
  Hello.
• 2:12:13
  You're going to have questions for Dr.
• 2:12:14
  Steve.
• 2:12:15
  Email them to me.
• 2:12:17
  I'm going to ask Dr Steve to come back on and we're going to answer those
• 2:12:21
  questions because then those questions are going to, and if you are coming from
• 2:12:26
  a suburban horse environment where you have limited space, please don't think
• 2:12:30
  that you're not part of this conversation.
• 2:12:31
  Ask Dr Steve for the, the solutions to get those dendrites going in your horses.
• 2:12:37
  Let's, let's get this conversation moving.
• 2:12:40
  Dr. Steven Peters: Let's discuss it.
• 2:12:42
  Let's be creative together.
• 2:12:44
  Let's figure these things out.
• 2:12:46
  So yeah, I'd invite your listeners.
• 2:12:48
  Everybody's included.
• 2:12:49
  The umbrella of brain functioning is huge.
• 2:12:53
  It exceeds all disciplines and all environments.
• 2:12:58
  You know, they're, we're talking about brains, so everybody's invited.
• 2:13:04
  Rupert Isaacson: All right.
• 2:13:04
  So listen, let's just go through the resources again.
• 2:13:07
  Tell us, the titles of your books so that people will want, they'll want those.
• 2:13:11
  what, what, what should they be ordering from Amazon if they want to read yourself?
• 2:13:17
  Dr. Steven Peters: Okay, you can go to Amazon and you can
• 2:13:19
  read evidence based horsemanship.
• 2:13:21
  That's the book that martin black and I wrote and we purposely, spent a lot
• 2:13:27
  of time trying to make it available.
• 2:13:30
  or make it accessible to as many people as possible.
• 2:13:34
  There's jargon in there, but there's also a glossary.
• 2:13:37
  It's not a huge academic tome.
• 2:13:39
  It's about 100 pages, and there are a lot of illustrations.
• 2:13:43
  So evidence based horsemanship, you can get that on Amazon.
• 2:13:48
  you can come, you can go to my website, horsebrainscience.
• 2:13:53
  info.
• 2:13:55
  You can also look up.
• 2:13:57
  Equiscience.
• 2:13:58
  com and look at the courses that, Sarah Schulte and I are doing together and
• 2:14:06
  that'll give you a pretty good start.
• 2:14:08
  Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
• 2:14:09
  All right.
• 2:14:11
  We're all going to go off and do that.
• 2:14:13
  And then we're going to ask you to come back on in a little while
• 2:14:16
  and answer the questions that the dendrites, in our brain are going to
• 2:14:21
  come up with, having been stimulated.
• 2:14:23
  today.
• 2:14:24
  thank you so, so much, Dr.
• 2:14:26
  Steve, for coming
• 2:14:27
  Dr. Steven Peters: on.
• 2:14:27
  Oh, it's been a pleasure.
• 2:14:28
  I really enjoyed, our discussion.
• 2:14:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Massively, massively.
• 2:14:32
  I'm going to bed.
• 2:14:33
  I'm going to go take my, my pause now and go, , bed down with, , see.
• 2:14:38
  Yeah.
• 2:14:38
  Dr. Steven Peters: Let the acetylcholine do its work now.
• 2:14:40
  Yeah.
• 2:14:40
  The acetylcholine.
• 2:14:41
  Have your glass of wine, relax, and let your brain Now, , do
• 2:14:45
  what it needs to do get a little
• 2:14:46
  Rupert Isaacson: white matter going.
• 2:14:47
  All right, I will I will see you on the next one Thank you so much.
• 2:14:51
  I'm very grateful.
• 2:14:53
  Dr. Steven Peters: Be well.
• 2:14:54
  Rupert Isaacson: thank you for joining us.
• 2:14:55
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:14:57
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• 2:15:02
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• 2:15:08
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• 2:15:12
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• 2:15:15
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