Episode 579: Dr. Masud Husain: Motivation, Memory, and the Truth About Aging Brains

**Jen Cohen** (0:06)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Habits and Hustle, where today I'm joined by Dr. Masud Husain. Imagine waking up one day and losing the drive to do anything. Not sad, not depressed, just nothing. No urge to shower, call a friend, or even turn on music you love. Well, that's exactly what happened to one of Dr. Masud Husain's patients after two tiny strokes you couldn't even see on a normal scan. Masud is one of the world's leading neurologists on memory, motivation, and cognitive decline. He co-leads the Dementia Research Group at Oxford University, and serves as editor-in-chief of Brain, one of the most respected journals in neurology. He spent decades studying real patients, not just theories, to understand what actually drives the way we think, act, and stay sharp as we age.
His take is simple.
The way most people think about brain health is backwards. Memory loss isn't usually the first sign of something's changing. Motivation is. And most of what gets blamed on laziness, burnout, or just getting older, is actually your brain sending you a signal. Today we get into why the earliest signs of decline show up in behavior, not memory. What dopamine actually does, and why the whole dopamine detox trend gets it all wrong. The daily habits quietly protecting or damaging your brain without you even realizing it. And where brain health tested is headed next. If you've ever wondered whether your brain is aging the way you think it is, this episode is going to change how you look at every off day you've ever had. But before we get into today's episode, one thing I never get tired of is reading what you all write in the reviews. So let me read one right now.
All right, a must listen, I love this one, thank you. A must listen, I love how Jen Cohen just says things with no filter. She says the things most of us are thinking. Her guests come from all aspects of life, and there's always nuggets to find in all of them. The Dr. Shadeh Zahira interview so far is one of my favorites. So many lessons and insights. All right, thank you so much. I appreciate that, and I think I pronounce your name, J. Becks Petit. I don't know if I did that right, but thank you. Keep them coming. And if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast, what are you waiting for? Please do.
Dr. Masud Husain, I am very happy to have you on this podcast.

**Masud Husain** (2:42)
Thanks for inviting me.

**Jen Cohen** (2:43)
Absolutely. Your background is, I think, impressive is pretty much the biggest understatement I can give, right? First of all, what we do on this podcast, before we start, and you're a perfect person, given your background, is we do these performance shots that are really good for focus, mental focus, and being more alert. And I wanted to do it with you, especially because of your background. Okay. So there are these things by Magic Mind. And so it's all like Lions Mane, Ashwagandha, which I want to talk to you about if these things actually, in your opinion, do like move the needle for you. So let's take a little, we don't do alcohol, we do healthy shots. So you shake it and we cheers, and then that's all we do. So here we go. Cheers. Here we go.
You tell me if you're more focused and more alert than ever before after taking it. Do you like it?

**Masud Husain** (3:40)
It's definitely interesting.

**Jen Cohen** (3:42)
Okay.
This one is a caffeine free one. I like the one that's more the OG, but this one is caffeine free. People like it because if they've had too much caffeine sometimes.

**Masud Husain** (3:55)
I could go to like it.

**Jen Cohen** (3:56)
Yeah. Good. I love that. All right. Okay. We need to get into this and you can tell me after if it made an impact.
Where do I begin with you? Because I really do have a million questions for you. One of my first questions is when the brain does start to decline, what do you say is the first thing that happens or people notice?

**Masud Husain** (4:18)
Well, it's a really complex area. Absolutely. It's not the kind of thing where you can say, this is what happens in everybody.
It really depends on which part of the brain is being affected. Perhaps the thing that most people notice in somebody else is memory. Because when memory goes, you notice that your mother or your friend or your grandfather isn't working in the same way they used to before. Their brains don't seem to be working as they were. But what we've realized is that there are other things that can happen long before something like memory shows up as a problem for these people. One of those things is actually motivation. So it turns out that even in healthy older people, if you start developing what we call apathy, lack of motivation, lack of goal-directed attention, that lack of goal-directed behavior, then your chances of developing dementia, for example, are twice that if you didn't have apathy. And the reason for...