The Neuro Experience Podcast By Louisa Nicola cover art

The Neuro Experience

The Neuro Experience

By: Louisa Nicola
Listen for free

The Neuro Experience. Conversations with the greatest minds in Brain Science.© 2026 The Neuro Experience fb50c0a0-1108-11f1-b5c5-e19bc6fe60a8 Hygiene & Healthy Living Physical Illness & Disease
Episodes
  • World’s #1 Brain Surgeon: The Truth About Protecting Your Brain After 40

    World’s #1 Brain Surgeon: The Truth About Protecting Your Brain After 40
    Jul 30 2026
    Ask most people what a brain chip does and they will tell you it reads your mind. Dr. Michael Lawton implants these devices, and he says that is not what comes off them. He is President and CEO of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, the hospital where Neuralink's first human implant was performed, and he has completed more than 10,000 brain operations and clipped around 5,500 aneurysms. Louisa sat down with him inside Barrow to find out what the electrodes actually pick up, how far the technology has come, and where it stops. He walks through the surgery itself. The device goes into the hand knob, one small lobule of the motor cortex, where 64 electrodes have already become 108. The threads carrying them are about a tenth the thickness of a hair, so a robot inserts them while avoiding every arteriole on the surface. You'll hear what Nolan Arbaugh, Neuralink's first patient, can now do with a cursor at world record speed, and why Lawton can't keep up with him in a head to head. Then the correction. The data coming off these electrodes is a train of spikes, the same electrical language every neuron in your head is already using, and decoding it tells you whether a person meant to move a cursor left or right. Reading an emotion, or what someone thinks of you, is nowhere close. The second half turns to the brain Lawton has spent 29 years operating inside. He describes cooling a patient to 15 degrees Celsius and stopping their circulation completely, which shrivels a giant aneurysm like a raisin and opens a short window to repair it. He explains why the hardest cases will still need a pair of human hands, and what he tells trainees who think their craft is disappearing. On brain aging he is direct about what works. He predicts alcohol will be viewed in 20 years the way cigarettes were viewed in the 60s, he takes zero supplements and no peptides, and he says exactly what he can and cannot see when he looks at a living brain on the table. You'll also hear about Barrow's Mindgenuity Labs and its six mysteries of the mind, why he ranks movement as the first one to fall and consciousness as the one that may never be solved, what he believes consciousness physically is inside 86 billion neurons, and the ground underneath all of it. His sister died of a brain tumor. Louisa's father had a stroke in 2019. Both of them have watched this from the other side of the table. *Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+:* https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance. _____ *TOPICS DISCUSSED* 00:00 Intro: The Brain Surgeon at Neuralink's First Hospital 00:39 The Guy Who Does the Cases Nobody Else Wants 02:17 A Day in the Life: 5:30am Starts and Three Surgeries 03:20 "Game Tape": Reviewing Every Operation Like an Athlete 04:24 The Surgeon Athlete and Why Surgery Is a Physical Skill 05:32 Fifty Years From Now: What Happens to Neurosurgery 06:11 The ROSA Robot and Mapping a Seizure Focus 08:16 Deep Brain Stimulation and Hitting an Exact Target 08:52 Will We All Be Operated On by Robots? 10:02 The Brain AVM: The One Case a Robot Can't Take 11:18 Why Bleeding Breaks a Robot: The Waymo Problem 13:15 What a Brain-Computer Interface Actually Does 14:49 The Hand Knob: 108 Electrodes in One Small Spot 15:50 Cursor Control at World Record Speed 16:31 Inside the Implant: Threads a Tenth the Width of a Hair 17:27 "No, the Chip Cannot Read Your Thoughts" 17:58 What the Device Really Reads: A Train of Spikes 19:18 From Movement to Sensation: What Comes Next 19:48 Why Restoring Sight Is So Much Harder 20:58 The 1943 Paper That Predicted All of This 22:37 Elon, Telepathy, and What's Actually Possible 23:00 Boosting Creativity and Intelligence in 50 Years 25:10 "When I Retire, We'll Be Treating Depression and Addiction" 26:04 Alzheimer's: Light Therapy and the Blood-Brain Barrier 27:11 Treating the Disease vs Preventing It 28:25 10,000 Operations: How He Feels About Robots Taking Over 29:54 Neuroplasticity: How Nolan's Brain Learned the Device 31:34 What Actually Changes at the Neuron Level 32:04 Patient Two and the Robotic Arm 32:42 5,500 Aneurysms: The Cases That Stay With Him 33:16 Cardiac Standstill: Cooling a Brain to 15 Degrees 35:46 What Separates a Great Surgeon From an Average One 36:17 Traits of Greatness: The Formula Nobody Has Cracked 37:21 The Phone Call in the Middle of a 16-Hour Surgery 39:35 "I Must Have Been Born for This" 41:26 Can You Tell How Old a Brain Is Just by Looking? 43:12 Why Alzheimer's Is Invisible in a Living Brain 44:14 What a Neurosurgeon Does to Protect His Own Brain 44:40 "Alcohol Will Be Viewed Like Cigarettes in the 60s" 45:13 Peptides, Injectables, and Zero Supplements 46:52 The Last Generation to Operate With Open Hands 48:10 How Louisa Found Him on Twitter in 2021 48:53 The Six Mysteries of the Mind 49:14 Which One Gets Solved...
    Show more Show less
    1 hr
  • 78.3% Alzheimer's Patients Are Women: Here’s How to Fix It. (Yes really)

    78.3% Alzheimer's Patients Are Women: Here’s How to Fix It. (Yes really)
    Jul 21 2026
    Two out of three Alzheimer's patients are women, and for decades that gap was written off as a side effect of living longer. The newer neuroscience tells a more specific story: menopause is not a reproductive event, it's a neurological one, and the pathology begins 20 to 30 years before the first symptom. In this episode, Louisa breaks down why the female brain loses its primary protection around 40, what actually drives the disease, and the seven evidence-based protections that can change the trajectory. She starts with the estrogen shield, the four things estrogen does in the female brain that nothing else replicates: it drives mitochondrial biogenesis, suppresses amyloid plaque formation, upregulates antioxidant enzymes, and maintains white matter integrity. You'll hear why estrogen doesn't decline smoothly but swings wildly through perimenopause before dropping roughly 80% by postmenopause, what PET scans already show in women in midlife, and why a 2021 paper by Mosconi and colleagues named menopause the single strongest predictor of Alzheimer's brain changes, stronger than age, stronger than family history. Then she turns to what you can do about it. You'll learn why resistance training, not cardio, produces the irisin and BDNF cascade that targets the exact pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's, and why two sessions a week was enough to preserve the brain regions the disease hits first. She covers the glymphatic system that clears amyloid and tau only during deep sleep, and why 70 to 80% of women in perimenopause lose exactly that sleep at exactly the wrong moment. She walks through the HRT timing fork, 32% lower risk when therapy starts within five years of menopause versus 38% higher when it starts after 65, the MIND diet's 53% risk reduction, the omega-3 dose most women get wrong by a factor of five, and the cortisol crisis that runs like a thread through every mechanism in the episode. It's not a death sentence. It's a timeline, and there is a window where the right information changes the outcome. To sponsor an episode- https://open.substack.com/pub/neuroathletics/p/sponsor-tne *Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+:* https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance. _____ *TOPICS DISCUSSED* 00:00 Intro: Two Out of Three Alzheimer's Patients Are Women 00:37 The Estrogen Shield and the Four Things It Does in Your Brain 02:13 What Happens to the Brain When Estrogen Drops 03:01 The Reframe: Menopause Is a Neurological Event, Not a Reproductive One 03:31 Why Women Develop More Tau Than Men 04:15 The 20-Year Head Start: It Begins in Your 30s and 40s 05:02 When the Silent Window Collides With Perimenopause 05:44 The Symptoms Women Are Told to Dismiss 06:42 The Diagnostic Gap and the APOE4 Risk 08:59 Protection 1: Why Resistance Training Beats Cardio 09:31 Irisin, BDNF, and Fertilizer for Your Neurons 10:37 The Brain-Scan Proof: Two Sessions a Week 11:16 Why Chronic Cardio Can Work Against Your Brain 13:36 Protection 2: The Glymphatic System and Deep Sleep 14:53 How Your Brain Cleans Itself Overnight 15:56 The Sleep Collision That's Specific to Women 16:37 Why Deep Sleep Beats Total Hours 18:41 Protection 3: The HRT Timing Window 18:56 32% Lower vs 38% Higher: Same Therapy, Opposite Outcomes 20:56 The 2002 Data Still Driving the Wrong Advice 21:05 APOE4 Carriers and the Largest HRT Benefit 23:19 Protection 4: The MIND Diet and a 53% Lower Risk 24:20 The Omega-3 Dose Most Women Get Wrong 25:17 Berries, Anthocyanins, and the Foods to Cut 27:38 The Cortisol Crisis: The Thread Through Everything 28:58 The Estrogen and Cortisol Feedback Loop 30:18 The "Healthy" Routine That's Quietly Hurting Your Brain 31:08 Seven Layers, One Message: This Is Preventable _______ *Thank you to our sponsors* Function Health: https://functionhealth.com/LouisaNicola - Use code NEURO25 for a $25 credit Timeline (Mitopure): https://timeline.com/neuro - Use code NEURO for a discount IQBAR: Text NEURO to 64000 for 20% off all IQBAR products plus FREE shipping (Message and data rates may apply) Cozy Earth: https://cozyearth.com - Use code NEURO for 20% off _______ I’m Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer’s prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics. My mission is to translate cutting-edge neuroscience into actionable strategies for cognitive longevity, peak performance, and brain disease prevention. If you're committed to optimizing your brain- reducing Alzheimer’s risk - and staying mentally sharp for life, you’re in the right place. Stay sharp. Stay informed. Join thousands who subscribe to the Neuro Athletics Newsletter → https://bit.ly/3ewI5P0 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louisanicola_/ Twitter : https://twitter.com/louisanicola_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Show more Show less
    33 mins
  • Exercise Expert: The Workout That Reverses 20 Years of Aging

    Exercise Expert: The Workout That Reverses 20 Years of Aging
    Jul 16 2026
    Six days before he sat down for this conversation, he ran a marathon. Then he explained what the race did to his brain. When you run 26 miles and your glycogen runs out, your brain still needs energy, so it starts stripping the fatty myelin off its own neurons and burning it for fuel. MRI scans caught a 20% drop in myelin up to two months after a marathon, and cognitive testing showed real impairment for about a month. In this episode, Louisa sits down with Brady Holmer, exercise physiologist, 2:24 marathoner, and author of VO2 Max Essentials, for one of the most practical conversations on aerobic fitness, brain health, and longevity the show has recorded. They cover why "marathon brain" is real but temporary, the menopause parallel where a starved brain catabolizes its own white matter, and whether pre-loading ketones or omega-3s can protect your myelin through a hard endurance effort. Then Brady breaks down VO2 max the way almost nobody does: not as a heart-and-lung number, but as a five-step oxygen cascade running from your lungs to your mitochondria, and why the bottleneck moves from your heart to your muscles as you age. You will learn the exact VO2 max floor below which everything becomes a maximal effort, the "50 at 50" target, and why women should aim for 40 to 50. Brady also lays out how the brain itself gates your fitness through myokine signaling, why the one to two hours after training may matter more than sleep for adaptation, and the truth about "non-responders" and the IGF binding protein biology behind trainability. Then the protocols: why the Norwegian 4x4 beats Tabata for VO2 max, how sauna and post-exercise ketones amplify the same session, why sleep consistency beats sleep duration, and the single weekly workout Brady says everyone should be doing for both VO2 max and brain health over the next decade. Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's with my science-backed protocol for women 30+: https://go.neuroathletics.com.au/youtube-sales-page Subscribe to The Neuro Experience for evidence-based conversations at the intersection of brain science, longevity, and performance. TOPICS DISCUSSED 00:00 Intro: Marathon Brain and the Number That Predicts How Long You Live 00:40 Does Running a Marathon Really Damage Your Brain? 01:04 The Study: 20% Myelin Loss on MRI After a Marathon 02:16 Impaired Cognition for a Month, Then Full Recovery 03:28 Why It Happens: The Brain Burns Its Own Myelin for Fuel 04:44 The Menopause Parallel: Brain Glucose Starvation and White Matter 05:57 Can Ketones and BHB Protect the Brain During a Marathon? 06:42 How Marathon Runners Should Fuel to Protect Cognition 08:22 VO2 Max: The Strongest Predictor of Mortality and Longevity 09:00 The Oxygen Cascade: What VO2 Max Actually Measures 11:08 Why VO2 Max Matters More As You Age 12:10 The VO2 Max Floor for Frailty and Daily Living 13:11 VO2 Max as a Brain Metric: Averages by Age and Sex 14:20 The "50 at 50" Target and What Women Should Aim For 15:09 The Female Masters Athlete Study and the VO2 Max Bank Account 16:01 How Your Brain Knows It Is Getting Fitter: Myokines 17:41 Mouse Studies: Block the Brain Signal, Lose the Adaptation 18:37 The Post-Workout Recovery Window That Drives Adaptation 19:53 What Kind of Rest Actually Works After Training 20:50 KetoneIQ: Clean Fuel for the Brain 21:50 Qualia Magnesium: Recovery and Deep Sleep 22:45 The Mission: Why Science Is the New Breaking News 27:25 Attacking VO2 Max From a Different Angle: What Is Your Bottleneck? 28:06 Central vs Peripheral: Heart, Muscle, and Mitochondria 30:20 Spotting Mitochondrial Dysfunction With a Simple Lactate Test 33:18 Training Each Link in the Oxygen Cascade 34:41 Targeting the Lungs: Inspiratory Muscle Training 36:19 Iron, Hemoglobin, and Heat as an Altitude Mimic 38:56 Exercise Hemolysis: Why Runners Break Down Red Blood Cells 39:59 Why Investors and CEOs Are Chasing VO2 Max 40:42 What Is Good for the Heart Is Good for the Brain 42:02 Exercise Snacks vs Deliberate Training as You Age 44:41 HIIT for Stroke Volume: Why the Norwegian 4x4 Works 45:43 4x4 vs Tabata and the 2 to 8 Minute Interval Sweet Spot 46:57 Using Heart Rate and Exertion to Train VO2 Max 48:02 Where AI Is Entering Endurance Coaching 49:14 Timeline Mitopure: Powering Your Mitochondria 50:16 Cozy Earth: Better Bedding, Better Sleep 51:04 Responders vs Non-Responders and the IGFBP Biology 55:35 How to Amplify Adaptation From the Same Training Load 56:39 Heat, Post-Exercise Ketones, and Getting the Basics Right 58:14 Sleep Consistency Beats Sleep Duration 01:00:24 The One Weekly Workout for VO2 Max and Brain Health Thank you to our sponsors KetoneIQ: https://ketone.com/NEURO for 30% OFF Qualia: https://qualialife.com/NEURO for 50% off Timeline: https://timeline.com/NEURO for Mitopure Cozy Earth: https://cozyearth.com use code NEURO for 20% off I’m Louisa Nicola - clinical neurophysiologist - Alzheimer’s prevention specialist - founder of Neuro Athletics. My mission is to translate ...
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 3 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet