korrents

Masud Husain

@masud-husain · 24 positions · 0 changes of mind

Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, whose research covers apathy, motivation, attention and Alzheimer's disease.

Masud Husain did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

  1. Our reading

    Motivation is not a personality trait but a biology, and when that biology fails a person can lose motivation entirely.

    Their wordsit was only about 15 years ago I started beginning to be aware that there may be a an important biology underlying motivation and when that biology goes wrong, it can lead to loss of motivation and even pathological apathy.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:03:24 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 1st of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our reading

    Motivated and apathetic people are indistinguishable when the reward is large; the whole difference between them shows up over small rewards.

    Their wordsWe find that everyone is willing to work for high rewards. But the difference between motivated people and apathetic people is at the level of the low rewards. Apathetic people are more inclined to say, "Nah, I don't think this is worth the effort, so I won't do that option."
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:09:31 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 2nd of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  5. Our reading

    Every action a person takes is the output of a reward-against-effort calculation the brain runs, and most of that calculation happens below awareness.

    Their wordsWe were talking about reward versus effort. And essentially that's a very important way I think that we make a decision. Much of that could be subconscious.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:23:12 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 3rd of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  7. Our reading

    Apathy is not a quieter brain but a costlier one: apathetic people burn more energy simply deciding whether an action is worth it.

    Their wordsIt's showing us that apathetic people use more brain energy when they're making this decision. They have a bigger activation energy barrier to overcome because when they're making that decision, the brain is consuming more energy. It's consuming more glucose when it's doing that.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:27:03 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 4th of 24 in this recording

    energy

    Interesting

  9. Our reading

    There are only two levers on anybody's motivation: change what the reward means to them, or lower the effort of getting started.

    Their wordsYou can either increase the reward or change it in some way in terms of something that's meaningful for the person or you change the effort required to accomplish maybe part of the task or perhaps start you know just initiate the task and often starting can be a huge motivational pull.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:31:04 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 5th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  11. Our reading

    Planning a day or a week in advance works because it pays the brain's decision cost once rather than dozens of times.

    Their wordsEvery decision has a cost in terms as we've seen the brain having to put in invest fuel to make that decision. So if you're having to do that every time you make a decision, that can seem very burdensome. Whereas if you did it once in a big way where you planned it out for the day or the week, maybe the costs in terms of the activation energy required for the brain is much lower for you if you do that.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:33:51 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 6th of 24 in this recording

    energy

    Interesting

  13. Our reading

    You do not have to finish a project to be rewarded for it: being told 'well done' for one piece is itself a motivational pull that keeps the work moving.

    Their wordsIt would also help if your manager said, "Well done for getting that bit done." Right? That's that's also a motivation pull to think, "Yeah, actually I don't need to get the whole piece done to get the reward of somebody identified that as a positive thing to have done."
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:34:57 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 7th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  15. Our reading

    The same physical effort can be re-valued as less effortful inside one person's head, mid-task, with nothing in the physics having changed.

    Their wordsAnd I think what you've said is within the individual, you can change your subject evaluation of the same effort you're running on the Gobi Desert, right? It's the same effort you've been putting in for miles and miles. And suddenly you have subjectively valued this thing as less effort
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:38:10 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 8th of 24 in this recording

    physics

    Interesting

  17. Our reading

    Finishing is as much a part of motivation as starting, and the two are separate capacities: plenty of energetic people never complete anything.

    Their wordsYou have to persevere. And that's the other really important part of motivation. You know, we know a lot of people who start things and then we also know the non-competers, the people who are always so energetic but actually don't finish, right? So, it's almost as important to be able to finish and complete as initiate actions.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:48:11 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 9th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  19. Our reading

    Generalising particular failures into 'I am bad at everything' is the route from lost motivation to clinical depression.

    Their wordsif you do for some reason generalize maladaptively to thinking this didn't work and I tried this, this didn't work, and I tried this and I'm really bad at this. That can lead not only to loss of motivation, but what we might call clinical depression.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:49:40 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 10th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  21. Our reading

    Apathy and depression are different conditions, not degrees of one thing: a person can lose all motivation while remaining perfectly happy.

    Their wordsthere are some people who have pure apathy, no depression like David. And there are other people who can be depressed, they can be sad, they can be hopeless about the future, but they don't necessarily lose motivation. They can have pure depression.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:50:23 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 11th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  23. Our reading

    Ambition does not equate with happiness: in the Harvard aging cohort it was the people who lived average lives who reported being happiest.

    Their wordsBut when they looked at the happiness levels of these people, it was the average person who actually would self-report the highest levels of happiness. So ambition doesn't necessarily equate with happiness, which I think many people would agree with with that.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:55:47 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 12th of 24 in this recording

    ambition

    Interesting

  25. Our reading

    Being told to be realistic about your ambitions is how ambitions fail; the boundaries people accept about what they can do are the ones that stop them.

    Their wordsIf I had thought in those ways, it probably wouldn't have happened. I just didn't think that we should have these boundaries to what you can do.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 0:56:54 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 13th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  27. Our reading

    Personality is not fixed: the self is the product of a society of cognitive modules, and take one module away and the self changes.

    Their wordsSo, I think the key point here is the self is not immutable. It's something that can change. People might think my personality is this way. It can never change. Well, your personality is the product of your society of mind.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:02:38 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 14th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  29. Our reading

    The evidence that scrolling social media delivers dopamine hits is not really very strong, whatever the popular story says.

    Their wordsOne is yes, I agree with you that this sort of behavior, doom scrolling, etc. occurs, but I think the evidence that there are dopamine hits when you're doing this isn't really very strong.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:15:02 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 15th of 24 in this recording

    social media

    Interesting

  31. Our reading

    Dopamine drives wanting rather than liking: the pleasure of actually getting the thing runs on opioids instead, which is why an addict can want what they do not enjoy.

    Their wordsAnd the evidence suggests that wanting pursuit of a goal is mediated or modulated at least by dopamine whereas actually the liking the pleasure you might get from an outcome is not that seems to be related to uh opioid neurotransmitters in the brain.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:16:28 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 16th of 24 in this recording

    Addiction

    Interesting

  33. Our reading

    The slowness of Parkinson's disease may be a failure of motivation to act rather than of motor control, which is why a patient can still run from a burning house.

    Their wordsSo it's a different way of framing why is there a reduction of action? Why is there bradicynesia, a slowing of movement in people with Parkinson's disease? That's really interesting. It doesn't just have to be about motor control. It could be the motivation to act just as we said with David, right?
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:22:32 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 17th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  35. Our reading

    Dopamine does far more than drive the motivation to act: it is also central to working memory and to executive control.

    Their wordsDopamine in the human brain isn't all about motivation to action. There's dopamine in other parts of the brain. We know from some really classical work by Patricia Goldman Rakit, for example, that dopamine is important for working memory, short-term memory.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:23:09 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 18th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  37. Our reading

    A stimulant taken to sharpen an already-high performer is more likely to make them worse, because the dose-response curve is an inverted U.

    Their wordsIf you start from a low baseline of performance, you might get some positive boost. It's quite small, but you might get it. But if you are actually quite a high performer, then you risk getting worse. with this is called the inverse U-shaped curve.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:46:59 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 19th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  39. Our reading

    ADHD is a real condition and over-diagnosed at the same time; the two claims are not incompatible, because the line marking normality is a judgement call.

    Their wordsBut I also think that this is not mutually incompatible with the view that there's also overdiagnosis. And I think we need very careful ways of making diagnosis because the conventional way is you take a history from a person about what the problem is.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 1:50:13 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 20th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  41. Our reading

    Alzheimer's disease and dementia are not the same thing: a fifth to a third of people whose brains carry the pathology never became demented.

    Their wordsAlzheimer's disease does not necessarily equal dementia. people can have Alzheimer's disease and not get dementia. So, we found this out from post-mortem studies. People have been followed as they age. Uh they've donated their brains and it turns out that perhaps 20 to 30% of these individuals who never had dementia have Alzheimer pathology.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 2:00:09 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 21st of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  43. Our reading

    Keeping a social network, staying curious and having a sense of purpose protect against dementia about as much as blood pressure and exercise do.

    Their wordsThose include that having that sense of purpose, making sure that you have a network of people, that you're socially connected as your age, and also remaining curious, open to new ideas. Those factors turn out to be almost as important as some of the physical things we do.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 2:02:11 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 22nd of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  45. Our reading

    Apathy in an otherwise healthy older person doubles their risk of Alzheimer's, which means the disease changes behaviour long before it touches cognition.

    Their wordsWhat we find is that those individuals who score highly on just self-reported questionnaires for motivation, if they score highly for apathy, they have twice the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease than people who don't.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 2:03:40 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 23rd of 24 in this recording

    Interesting

  47. Our reading

    There is little evidence anyone can train their attention to be better in general; what works is removing the things that take it.

    Their wordsSo I think although there might not be a great deal of evidence that you can intrinsically train your attention to do better generally what you could do is to cut out things that are distracting for you.
    spoken · machine transcript hear it at 2:12:50 · all korrents from this recording

    ↗How to Improve Motivation & Overcome Procrastination | Dr. Masud Husainyoutube.com 24th of 24 in this recording

    Interesting